JANUARY 95 



animals in an open pen during a wet season. Lastly, the cattle 

 do far better under shelter. 



January 28. The day before yesterday I rode to Kessingland, 

 fifteen miles away, on a bicycle, and beyond Beccles I stopped 

 to talk with an old labourer who was hedge-trimming. He 

 told me that he was seventy years of age and had worked in that 

 neighbourhood all his life, but that never yet had he known such 

 a season for the time of year, or the water in dykes, ponds, and 

 springs to be so low. 



Yesterday was mild and dry, and all my three ploughs were 

 at work 'thwarting' that is cross-ploughing root-land on the 

 Nunnery Farm. 



A good many more lambs have been born, and, with their 

 mothers, are established in comfortable little hurdle-made pens in 

 the old barn at All Hallows. The worst of this plan is that the 

 lambs get through the hurdles and become inextricably mixed in 

 their vain attempts to find their own mothers. It is curious to 

 notice the behaviour of the ewes when the wrong lamb comes to 

 them. First they sniff at it, for to all appearance they are guided 

 in this matter by the sense of smell alone ; then, if the result is un- 

 satisfactory, they simply put down their heads and with a vicious 

 butt knock the poor little creature into space. Evidently they have 

 no affection for lambs as a class ; it is only their individual offspring 

 that claims their sympathy. Yesterday we had to try one old ewe 

 with about a dozen different lambs, each of which she knocked 

 over in the most cold-blooded fashion. A cautious sniff at the 

 thirteenth satisfied her that at length her missing infant had 

 returned, whereon she baa-ed contentedly, and with a smile of 

 maternal pride allowed it to partake of refreshment. 



I noticed for the first time the brilliant but tiny scarlet blooms 

 open upon the filbert bushes ; by the number of them it should 

 be a good nut-year. My drill was hired out to a neighbour to put 

 in his spring beans ; the man in charge of it told me that they 

 went in very well 



