w
as it falls, and form a thick roof, under the shelter of which, near some
pool or rivulet, the animals remain until spring opens, as snugly
protected from the severity of the weather as sheep under the sheds of a
farm-yard. Here they feed upon the leaves of the laurel and other
evergreens. It is contrary to the law to kill them after the Christmas
holidays, but sometimes their retreat is invaded, and a deer or two
killed; their flesh, however, is not wholesome, on account of the laurel
leaves on which they feed, and their skin is nearly worthless."

I expressed my surprise that the leaves of the mountain laurel, the
_kalmia latifolia_, which are so deadly to sheep, should be the winter
food of the deer.

"It is because the deer has no gall," answered the man, "that the pison
don't take effect. But their meat will not do to eat, except in a small
quantity, and cooked with pork, which I think helps take the pison out of
it."

"The deer," he went on to say, "are now passing out of the blue into the
gray. After the holidays, when their hair becomes long, and their winter
coat is quite grown, their hide is soft and tender, and tears easily when
dressed, and it would be folly to kill them, even if there were no law
against it." He went on to find a parallel to the case of the deer-skins
in the hides of neat-cattle, which, when brought from a hot country, like
South America, are firmer and tougher than when obtained in a colder
climate like ours.

The Wyoming traveller gave a bad account of the health, just at present,
of the beautiful valley in which he lived. "We have never before," said
he, "known what it was to have the fever and ague among us, but now it is
very common, as well as other fevers. The season has neither been
uncommonly wet nor uncommonly dry, but it has been uncommonly hot." I
heard the same account of various other districts in Pennsylvania. Mifflin
county, for example, was sickly this season, as well as other parts of the
state which, hitherto have been almost uniformly healthy. Here, however,
in Stroudsburg and its neighborhood, they boasted that the fever and ague
had never yet made its appearance.

I was glad to hear a good account of the pecuniary circumstances of the
Pennsylvania farmers. They got in debt like every body else during the
prosperous years of 1835 and 1836, and have been ever since working
themselves gradually out of it. "I have never," said an intelligent
gentleman of Stroudsbur