100 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



the coal-boy occasionally do his donkey. Ellman 

 trimmed his old sheep thus, with a view to their 

 being clean and cool in hot weather, a full month 

 before the shearing time. Upon the same principle, 

 certain it is that you must not expect to save so 

 large a measure of your ducklings when you neglect 

 to clip their downy tails as they first take to the 

 water. At Rambouillet, in France, the experiment 

 has been tried of letting the fleece grow on without 

 clipping for several years ; the result of which was to 

 show that if they can be kept sound they improve by 

 accumulation, the fleeces of the sheep shorn for the 

 first time in three years being equal in point of 

 staple to those of three others which were annually 

 shorn, and producing a larger sum. 



