JANUARY 93 



I shouted aloud to Hood, whereupon the ewes, of their own accord, 

 and without waiting to be driven, stopped gobbHng the remains of 

 the cabbages and ran to a hole, which they must have made in the 

 thick fence with considerable effort and difificulty while we were 

 talking, and through it, one by one, back into the road. This 

 spontaneous retreat seems to prove that they knew perfectly well 

 that they were doing what they should not. Indeed, I think that 

 sheep are nothing like so foolish as they are supposed to be, though 

 nearly all their intelligence seems to concentrate itself upon matters 

 connected with their provender, for of the ovine race it may be said 

 with truth, ' their god is their belly.' It is curious to notice how 

 seldom they stop eating while there is anything left that excites their 

 appetite, and how, after having fed heavily for hours in one place, 

 on the gate being opened, they will rush to another in the hope of 

 finding more food there. Thus this very morning, so soon as they 

 had escaped from the ruined garden, they set off down the road, 

 round the proper turn, to the gate of the field where they are 

 penned in the daytime, about a quarter of a mile away. Here, 

 heavy as they are in lamb, they broke into a full gallop in their 

 eagerness to reach the turnips heaped on the land and steal some 

 before their shepherd arrived to put them in the pen. 



This afternoon I Avent to Bedingham, and found the wheats 

 looking wonderfully green and thick, so much so that in the case 

 of two of the pieces, Nos. 6 and 8 on the plan, they will, I think, 

 have to be thinned by harrowing. The crops on these fields last 

 year were respectively beans and pease, and doubtless we owe this 

 fine prospect to the nitrogen collected from the atmosphere by 

 these leguminous plants. The remaining piece of wheat, No. 9, 

 is not nearly so strong, I suppose because it is grown on flag-land, 

 this field having been a clover layer last year, off which a cut of 

 hay was taken, followed, as the autumn proved suitable to its ripen- 

 ing, by a crop of seed. 



I found Moore, who is in local charge of this farm, baulking or 

 earthing up for root. He said, and I agreed with him, that the 

 land had never been known to work so well at this time of year 



