198 A FARMER'S YEAR 



was, I think, attended by the father of Dr. Crowfoot, of Beccles, 

 was bitten, but recovered. My friend, Dr. Lyne Stivens, tells me 

 also of a dreadful case which was seen by his father, a doctor 

 in the neighbourhood of Chester. In this instance a woman 

 went with her eighteen-month-old baby into a wood to gather 

 sticks, and laid it down asleep while she sought them. Her 

 movements disturbed an adder which, hurrying away to seek 

 a hiding-place, crawled down the mouth of the child and choked it. 

 He says that this horrible case made a great sensation at the time. 



May 10. Yesterday the weather was dull and raw, with a 

 sou'-west wind. On the farm we were doing odd jobs and split- 

 ting the baulks for swedes upon the glebe-land. Also the corn which 

 we sold the other day was carted from Bedingham to Loddon, 

 where we contracted to deliver it. To-day I was walking round 

 Baker's, and find that the docks, which with the other weeds will, 

 for this season at any rate, as I fear, make the farm a damnosa 

 hereditas to me, are simply countless. Many of them also are 

 marsh docks, a peculiarly virulent variety, with fanged roots, that 

 break when one attempts to draw them, which have been brought 

 up with the lowland hay and carted on to the land in the manure. 

 The wheat on No. 42 is looking rather yellow, but I think it is 

 because at this season its roots are beginning to pass down into 

 the subsoil. The roots of wheat penetrate, I believe, many feet 

 through the earth, and when they first leave the cultivated stratum 

 the top is apt to show a yellow tinge. At Bedingham, whither I 

 went this afternoon, the wheat continues to look magnificent, but 

 the barley is rather thin and yellow, owing to the prolonged cold 

 and damp. Barley at Bedingham only does well in a hot, dry year. 



The young red-poll steers and heifers, which are grazing in 

 Websdill Wood, set to work to hunt the two terrier dogs that 

 accompanied me, chasing them round and round the great field, 

 till at length the dogs, growing tired and frightened, either hid in 

 a ditch or bolted straight away for the open country. At any 

 rate they vanished, and I was obliged to come home without 



