ROOKS. VISIT TO A FARM. 101 



air, and a number of large black birds were rapidly rising 

 and falling. &quot; Ton s the hall ; ye see the rooks.&quot; 

 &quot; The rooks ! Then those are rooks, are they f 

 &quot; Ay, be they rooks do ye not know what rooks be f 

 &quot; Yes, but we don t have them in America.&quot; 

 &quot; No ! not have rooks ? They be main good in. a pie, sir.&quot; 

 We met the cows, of which there were about a dozen, 

 driven by a boy towards the farm-house. Any one of them 

 would have been considered remarkably fine in America. 

 They were large and in good order; with soft, sleek skin, and 

 like every cow I have seen in England, look as if they had 

 just been polished up for exhibition. He could tell nothing 

 of their breed except of one, a handsome heifer, which he said 

 came partly of Welsh stock. He took me across a field or 

 two to look at a few cows of the squire s. They were finer 

 than any of his, and seemed to be grade short-horns. 



The cows were driven into hovels, which he called ship, 

 pens, and fastened at their mangers by a chain and ring 

 sliding on an upright post (the latest fashion with us), eight 

 of them in an apartment, standing back to back. Three or 

 four of his daughters came out to milk very good-looking, 

 modest young women, dressed in long, loose, grey, homespun 

 gowns. They had those high wooden tubs to milk in that 

 we see in the old pictures of sentimental milkmaids. It 

 seems constantly like dreaming to see so many of these 

 things that we have only known before in poetry or painting. 

 The dairy-house and all the farm buildings were of brick, 

 interworked with beams of wood and thatched. They were 

 very small, the farm being only of fifty acres, and the 

 hay and grain always kept in stacks. The arrangements for 

 saving manure were poor much the same as on any tolerably 

 good farm with us a hollowed yard with a pool of liquid on 

 one side. He bought some dung and bones in Liverpool 



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