100 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



most free from mosquitoes, and you will find their 

 yards and haunts good camping places for that reason. 



A sheep path, too, is the best route for a railroad. 

 Sheep are the surest of weather prophets, and know 

 the difference between a real and an apparent storm. 

 If the sheep stay out during a storm and cast their 

 weather eye upwards with disdain and go on browsing, 

 you may know there will be no bad weather, that it will 

 be only a passing local shower. But if they come in 

 toward the barn and cower behind the stacks, then you 

 had better come in with them. 



Grandfather used to have sheep, and a great time 

 they had of it in shearing time, when they drove the 

 flock down to the river, four miles away, and washed 

 the fleece. There are few more delightful occupations 

 than the raising of sheep. Even their care, and the 

 actual handling and feeding, are poetic. They are the 

 most beautiful, to my notion, of all God's domestic 

 animals. There are few spots in my memory so green 

 as the hours I have spent in the tending of sheep and 

 lambs. 



Animals, too, depend upon the sense of smell to 

 help them much more than does man. They can tell 

 their own young by this sense, and where they them- 

 selves have lain last, and whether they are in their own 

 or an alien flock or herd. 



The gregarious instinct in animals begets colonies 

 of ants, schools of fishes, swarms of bees, broods and 

 flocks of chickens, coveys of quail, flocks and bands of 

 sheep, herds of cattle, droves of hogs, litters of pup- 

 pies, packs of hounds, bevies of girls, crowds of boys, 

 and communities of men and women. 



