8 FIELD AND FERN. 



ponies. We are nearly a hundred miles from a grouse 

 or a badger ; but there are a few hares, and there 

 never was more than one fox in the islands. He was 

 an escaped Icelander, and a regular parishioner of 

 Lunnesting, where he led a merry bachelor life among 

 the rabbits while it lasted. He occasionally ran 

 down the sheep, and, by way of comment on the 

 mutton, only ate their tongues. 



Gradually we begin to strike inland through a 

 succession of rudely-fastened gates on to a boundless 

 muir, which sheep and ponies seemed to hold in fee. 

 A skewball and a brown with long matted locks stand 

 moodily under a rock, one with a foal at her foot. 

 A dun, as short on her legs as a Kerry, and a 

 " cherry-red" chesnut trot off steadily to the heights 

 along with a yearling, which winter will reduce into 

 a mass of frosty wool, with fierce little eyes and four 

 black'feet. As for the sheep, they are off like a pistol- 

 shot before one can say, " Lie down, Croppies." A 

 lusty lamb with Cheviot-looking wool, which will ere 

 long run to hair at the points, scampers after the 

 plainest of dams, which has milked till she is almost 

 "at the lifting." Unity of colour there is none. One 

 ewe was brindled, and ethers blue, grey, and black 

 with white legs and blaze. " Black and all black" 

 was quite common, and the colour would sometimes 

 come rug-shape, or under the belly, or round both 

 eyes. A pink or a white nose could hardly be called 

 the exception. Still the palm for queerness rested 

 with a lamb, speckled or ringstraked, we forget which, 



