PART III J MORRIS BIRKBECK, ESQ. 585 



work ! Let me digress here, for a moment, to 

 ask you if you have got a sow-spay er? We have 

 no such man here. What a loss arises from 

 this ! What a plague it is. We cannot keep a 

 whole farrow of pigs, unless we breed from all 

 the sows ! They go away : they plague us to 

 death. Many a man in England, now as poor 

 as an owlet, would (if he kept from the infernal 

 drink) become rich here in a short time. These 

 sow-gelders, as they call them, swarm in Eng 

 land. Any clown of a fellow follows this call 

 ing, which is hardly two degrees above rat- 

 catching and mole-catching: and yet there is 

 no such person here, where swine are so numer 

 ous, and where so many millions are fatted for 

 exportation! It is very strange. 



1042. To return to the thatching: Straw id 

 not so durable as one could wish : besides, in 

 very high winds, it is liable, if not reeded, to be 

 ruffed a good deal ; and the reeding, which is 

 almost like counting the straws one by one, is 

 expensive. In England we sometimes thatch 

 with reeds, which in Hampshire, are called 

 spear. This is an aquatic plant. It grows in 

 the water, and will grow no where else. When 

 stout it is of the thickness of a small cane at 

 the bottom, and is about four or five feet long. 

 I have seen a thatch of it, which, with a little 

 patching, had lasted upwards of \fifty years. In 



