Speeches, bitter and long, were made on both sides of the Atlantic; the cable brought reports of drastic reprisals preparing in Washington; but finally a system was adopted to which the trade between the two countries has since been uneasily trying to adjust itself. Then there was sprung upon us the fruit question. One morning came a storm of telegrams and letters stating that cargoes of American fruits had been stopped in the German harbors, under the charge that they contained injurious insects. The German authorities were of course honest in this procedure, though they were doubtless stimulated to it by sundry representatives of the land-owning class. Our beautiful fruits, especially those of California, had come to be very extensively used throughout the empire, and the German consumers had been growing more and more happy and the German producers more and more unhappy over this fact, when suddenly there came from the American side accounts of the scale-insects discovered on pears in California, and of severe measures taken by sundry other States of our Union to prohibit their importation. The result was a prohibition of our fruits in Germany, and this was carried so far that not only pears from California, but all other fruits, from all other parts of the country, were at first put under the ban; and not only fresh but dried and preserved fruits. As a matter of fact, there was no danger whatever from the scale-insect, so far as fruit was concerned. The creature never stirs from the spot on the pear to which it fastens itself, and therefore by no possibility can it be carried from the house where the fruit is consumed to the nurseries where trees are grown. We took pains to show the facts in the case; dealing fairly and openly with the German Government, allowing that the importation of scale-infested trees and shrubs might be dangerous, and making no objection to any fair measures regarding these. The Foreign Office was reasonable, and gradually the most vexatious of these prohibitions were removed.