SHEER 83 



panions. I have seen them, in like fatal sequence, 

 climb up a high straight pitch of unprotected granary 

 steps, and follow the leader, Sappho-like, from the 

 uppermost in heaps before they could be arrested. 

 Tales there are of a mountain flock, on more than 

 one occasion, taking at a fly, one after another, in 

 quick irresistible succession, a man who happened 

 accidentally to stop the way in a narrow pass. It is, 

 probably, for some reason of this sort than in Spain 

 a road of the extreme breadth of two hundred and 

 forty feet, across the cultivated lands, is required 

 to be reserved for the migration in October, from 

 their summer pasture on the table-lands to the 

 lower ground again, of the flocks of the Mesta — 

 an injurious protectionist association of sheep pro- 

 prietors, made up mainly of the ecclesiastics and 

 nobles. 



With equally unreasoning and fatal persistency 

 will a flock of these animals follow the marauding 

 wolf that has chased away and killed their com- 

 panion, not daring to attack, but stupidly beating 

 defiance with their feet, until he has laid low some 

 fourteen in turn, and regaled himself to the eyes in 

 their hearts' blood. A sad coward, I am constrained 

 to allow, too, is the sheep. If it gets entangled in 

 those thorns, which should have been cut away 

 around the pasture, or roll over on its back, there it 

 will remain, feet up, like a turtle, without effort to 

 recover itself, until often they die of suffocation, 

 unless noticed in time. 



Mind and take an early opportunity of dipping 

 your flock, as soon as the ewes have well got over 



g 2 



