HORSES. 35 



In fact, whatever be the stock, 'tis keep and 

 shelter that tells in the end. Look even at that 

 draggle-tailed Elspeth upon the stack there, doling 

 out their pittance of mouldy hay to a couple of 

 depressed Hereford heifers. Two years since, by 

 courtesy Maria, she was a stylish housemaid at the 

 castle; to-day she is the desponding partner of a 

 too adventurous young farmer. Better had she 

 known when she was well off. In illustration again, 

 only to-day I noticed a red-breasted flunkey fetch in 

 a pair of grumbling, shiny, broad-backed porkers, 

 which, only two months ago, I deemed too dearly 

 bought for a pound apiece. While on the other side 

 the road, with the last sole surviving item of her 

 starved litter crawling after her, there cropped the 

 scanty grass a sow, the facsimile on a giant scale in 

 shape of a young mouse — flap-eared, hairless, lank — 

 what, a few months since, was a farewell gift pig, 

 bought out of a prize Yorkshire small-breed lot, and 

 presented to an old man in our village by his son, 

 an artisan, upon his leaving for Australia. What a 

 various fate hath befallen them ! The one of aristo- 

 cratic lineage reduced to the poor-house ; the other, 

 born in a cot and advanced to aldermanic plenty. 

 On large farms, where the fields are thirty to forty 

 acres each, or upwards, in extent, a team of bullocks 

 pays well, there not being the loss of time in turning 

 on such ground, which is one chief reason of com- 

 plaint against the practice of ploughing with oxen ; 

 but there must be in addition a sufficient number of 

 horses to do the road work. 



Much depends, again, upon the nature of the soil : 



d 2 



