"Doc Peets informs me once when we crosses up with some locoweed over by the Cow Springs, that thar's two or three breeds of this malignant vegetable. He writes down for me the scientific name of the sort we gets ag'inst. Thar she is." And my friend produced from some recess of a gigantic pocketbook a card whereon the learned Peets had written oxytropis Lamberti. "That's what Peets says loco is," he resumed, as I handed back the card. "Of course, I don't go surgin' off pronouncin' no sech words; shorely not in mixed company. Some gent might take it personal an' resent it. But I likes to pack 'em about, an' search 'em out now an' then, jest to gaze on an' think what a dead cold scientist Doc Peets is. He's shorely the high kyard; thar never is that drug-sharp in the cow country in my day who's fit to pay for Peets' whiskey. Scientific an' eddicated to a feather aige, Peets is. "You-all oughter heard him lay for one of them cliff-climbin', bone-huntin' stone c'llectors who comes out from Washin'ton for the Gov'ment. One of these yere deep people strikes Wolfville on one of them rock- roundups he's makin', an' for a-while it looks like he's goin' to split things wide open. He's that contrary about his learnin', he wont use nothin' but words of four syllables-words that runs about eight to the pound. He comes into the New York Store where Boggs an' Tutt an' me is assembled, an', you hear me, son! that savant has us walkin' in a cirkle in a minute. "It's Peets who relieves us. Peets strolls up an' engages this person in a debate touchin' mule-hoof hawgs; the gov'ment sport maintainin' thar ain't no such swine with hoofs like a mule, because he's never heard about 'em; an' Peets takin' the opp'site view because he's done met an' eat 'etn a whole lot. "'The mere fact,' says Peets to this scientist, 'that you mavericks never knows of this mule-hoof hawg, cannot be taken as proof he does not still root an' roam the land. Thar's more than one of you Washin'ton shorthorns who's chiefly famed for what he's failed to know. The mule-hoof hawg is a fact; an' the ignorance of closet naturalists shall not prevail ag'inst him. His back is arched like a greyhound's, he's about the thickness of a bowie-knife, he's got hoofs like a mule, an' sees his highest deevelopment in the wilds of Arkansaw.' "But speakin' of locoweed, it's only o'casional that cattle or mules or broncos partakes tharof. Which I might repeat for the third time that, genial, they eschews it. But you-- all never will know how wise a anamile is till he takes to munchin' loco. Once he's plumb locoed, he jest don't know nothin'; then it dawns on you, by compar'son like, how much he saveys prior. The change shows plainest in mules; they bein'--that is, the mule normal an' before he's locoed--the wisest of beasts. Wise, did I say? A mule is more than valise, he's sagacious. An' thar's a mighty sight of difference. To be simply wise, all one has to do is set 'round