VII.] GOATS AND EWES. 113 



the boy that cannot, in harvest-time, pick up enough 

 along the lanes to serve his rabbits for a year? The 

 care is all; and the habit of taking care of things is, 

 of itself, a most valuable possession. 



188. To those gentlemen who keep rabbits for the 

 use of their family (and a very useful and convenient 

 article they are,) I would observe, that when they 

 find their rabbits die, they may depend on it, that 

 ninety-nine times out of the hundred starvation is 

 the malady. And particularly short feeding of the 

 doe, while, and before she has young ones; that is 

 to say, short feeding of her at all tim.es ; for, if she 

 be poor, the young ones will be good for nothing. 

 She will live being poor, but she will not, and cannot 

 breed up fine young ones. 



GOATS AND EWES. 



189. IN some places where a cow cannot be kept, 

 a goat may. A correspondent points out to me, that 

 a Dorset ewe or two might be kept on a common near 

 a cottage to give milk; and certainly this might be 

 done very well ; but I should prefer a goat, which is 

 hardier and much more domestic. When I was in 

 the army, in New Brunswick, where, be it observed, 

 the snow lies on the ground seven months in the year, 

 there were many goats that belonged to the regiment, 

 and that went about with it on shipboard and every- 

 where else. Some of them had gone through nearly 

 the whole of the American War. We never fed them. 

 In summer they picked about wherever they could 

 find grass ; and in winter they lived on cabbage-leaves, 

 turnip-peelings, potatoe-peelings, and other things 

 flung out of the soldiers' rooms and huts. One of these 

 goats belonged to me, and, on an average throughout 

 the year, she gave me more than three half-pints of 

 milk a day. I used to have the kid killed when a few 

 days old ; and, for some time, the goat would give 

 nearly or quite, two quarts of milk a day. She was 

 seldom dry more than three weeks in the year. 



190. There is one great inconvenience belonging 



10* 



