Did you ever stop (slap!) to consider the mosquito? Did it ever occur to you that if a boy had an appetite in proportion to his size like that of a mosquito (slap!) he would eat a whole ox at a meal? Perhaps you think a mosquito too small a thing to occupy your thoughts. If so (slap!) you have another guess coming. Until science made a few epoch-making discoveries the mosquito prevented some of the mightiest works. Because it carries the germs of yellow fever it delayed the building of the Panama canal for years and increased the cost of all kinds of public works. By carrying the germs of malaria and giving people the ague it made the clearing of many parts of Canada doubly hard. (Slap! slap!) And this year it is a temper-rousing, sleep-destroying pest. With every cow-track full of water it has breeding places everywhere and you can hear its hum wherever you go. (Slap! Missed again!) Even though we have screens on the windows and doors we cannot keep them out of the house because they come in riding on people's backs while waiting for a chance to bite. And did you ever consider how naturally mean the mosquito is? Not content with driving its beak into a fellow it injects a poison and possibly some disease germs. Of all created things the mosquito is about the most useless and irritating. Its snarling hum—(Slap! Whoop! Got him that time and now I can talk about something else.)

About the first sign of fall is to have the cattle get into new fields. During the earlier months they are confined to the pasture but as the crops are taken off they are allowed a wider range. As soon as they find a new field open to them they rush into it as eagerly as if they were getting into mischief and do not rest until they have wandered to every corner. Even though the new field may offer them many bits of good pasture they do not stop to eat them but go around the fences and poke their heads through wires to get what they can from the adjoining field. The pasture they have never seems to satisfy them. It is the pasture in the other field that interests them. In this they are very human. But giving them a wider range makes the chore of bringing them home at milking time more important and this summer I undertook to train Sheppy to the work with a rather peculiar result. As he is a pure-bred sheep dog he always goes to the farthest off in the bunch as soon as he is sent after them. This is usually enough to start the herd towards the barn and as soon as he has started them I call him off so that he walks quietly behind them. When the cattle became used to being brought home by Sheppy they apparently learned something. The dog is usually wandering away somewhere with the children and when I need him I have to whistle for him. During the past couple of weeks as soon as I began to whistle for Sheppy the cows started for the barn. Now I can get them home whether the dog is around or not simply by whistling. All of which goes to show that old Fenceviewer I. and her progeny are not like other cows.