f5o A FARMER'S YEAR 



died, is queer, and two more lambs are very ill. Most of these 

 poor creatures are so stiff that when once they lie down they do 

 not seem to care to get up again. Thus, as they neglect to run - 

 to their mothers to suck, naturally they lose strength, till at length 

 in the worst instances they sink beyond recovery and die. The 

 veterinary has inspected them, but can only shake his head and say 

 that although every possible care had been taken, as was indeed the 

 case, undoubtedly the cutting about was done when the lambs 

 were too old. I quite agree with him ; but it is only another 

 instance of how, in trying to escape one danger, we may fall into 

 a worse. Another year, be it hot or cold, off go the lambs' tails 

 before they have seen out three weeks. 



The cattle at Baker's seem to have got over their ailments for 

 the present, and are growing into fine beasts, as they ought, con- 

 sidering the amounts of corn, cake, and root that vanish down 

 their capacious gullets. The beet clamps, indeed, are melting very 

 fast ; at the beginning of winter it looked as though it would be 

 impossible for any number of cattle which we could keep to devour 

 the contents of those scores of yards of hales before the summer 

 came again. Now it is clear that this was a mistake, for we have 

 many mouths to feed, con.sidering the size of the place, most 

 of which get hungrier as they grow. It is difficult for us to 

 imagine what our forefathers did before root culture was intro- 

 duced. I suppose that they never attempted to fat beef in winter, 

 but were content to keep it in store condition by the help of 

 hay. I think it was my friend, Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson, who 

 told me that in his father's time in Suffolk the meat for the 

 winter's consumption of a house was always salted down from 

 the beasts killed in autumn, which had grown fat on the summer 

 pastures. 



To-day I heard the first nightingale on Hollow Hill. Ever 

 since I have known this place, and, as I am told, for generations 

 before I knew it, nightingales have frequented that spot. A little 

 plantation grows in what was no doubt an ancient clay or marl 

 pit, through which the Norwich road now runs, and here two 



