98 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



folium and young wheat in defiance of lime, tar- 

 water, salt, the roller, and the frost, "endures the 

 cold better than shell snails, because its body is 

 covered with slime, as whales with blubber." 



When sheep are upon turnips they should have 

 some shelter afforded them. I saw, last summer, at 

 Penrhyn Castle, some most serviceable machines for 

 use on exposed situations, shutting-up, and running 

 on four wheels, to which a horse is attached by 

 hooks. They were made with wardrobe doors to 

 open out, and with a small hayrack inside : a regular 

 shed, in fact, and a right good thought it was. People 

 enlarging on the statement that sheep do not need 

 shelter, refer you often to the instance of the moun- 

 tain sheep. Why, excepting during snowdrifts, no 

 sheep are better off. See them in bad weather 

 chewing the cud, snugly housed (and they always 

 seek the shelter, too) beneath a rock or to the lee- 

 ward of a broken gorse bush. A small farmer near 

 this, who cannot afford much expense in the shape of 

 such sheds, has ingeniously hollowed with just half a 

 spade-cut a hedge-bank on each side of his driest 

 meadow, which he keeps in rowen annually, and 

 around which, too, he allows the hedges to be rather 

 tall. I have seen magnificent lambs resting there as 

 warm as a toast during a fearfully sleety raw March 

 day. Don't tell me that they enjoy themselves 

 under the circumstances to which they are often 

 subjected by hard-hearted masters. Look at the 

 poor creatures on that open there, within simply a 

 net, burying their heads — as many as can — behind 

 the soaked coarse hay in the dripping rack, which 



