The prime property of the loco is to induce insanity in men or animals who partake of it. Animals--mules, horses, sheep and cattle--avoid it naturally, and under ordinary circumstances never touch it. But in the winter, when an inch or two of snow has covered the grass, these green bunches of loco standing clear and above the snow are tempting bits to animals which are going about half starved at the best. Even then it is not common for them to eat it. Still, some do and it at once creates an appetite in the victim similar in its intense force to the alcohol habit in mankind. Once started on the downward path of loco a mule will abandon all other forms of food and look for it. In a short time its effects become perfectly apparent. You will see a locoed mule standing out on the shadowless plain with not a living, moving thing in his vicinity. His head is drooping and his eyes are half closed. On the instant he will kick and thresh out his heels in the most warlike way. Under the influence of loco he sees himself surrounded by multitudes of threatening ghosts and is repelling them. The mind of the animal is completely gone. He cannot be driven or worked because of his utter lack of reason. He will go right or left or turn around in the harness in spite of bits or whip, or will fail to start or stop, and all in a vacant, idiotic way devoid of malice. The victim becomes as thin physically as mentally, and after retrograding four or five months at last dies, the most complete wreck on record. Many gruesome tales are furnished of cruel Spanish and Mexican ladies who, in a jealous fit, have locoed their American admirers through the medium of loco tea. Two or three cases in kind are reported in the Texas lunatic asylum. OENTHE CROCATA. PREPARATION.--The fresh root is macerated in two parts by weight of alcohol. (The following paper on _OEnanthe crocata_ was kindly sent to the editor by Dr. W. A. Dewey, of the Ann Arbor University, Michigan): _OEnanthe crocata_ belongs to the large family of the Umbelliferæ which furnishes us with _Conium_ and _Cicuta_. It grows in marshy localities in England and France. In Botanical works of the 16th and 17th centuries it was often confounded with _Cicuta virosa_, an error which has even been made in more recent times, in fact, only one Botanist of the 19th century described the plant with sufficient exactness for its recognition, and that was DeLobel, who published his Botany in 1851. It is one of the largest plants of the family, being 3 to 5 feet high. Our tincture is from the fresh root.