104 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



which the sheep soon make hollow inside, and thus 

 have a cave in which to nestle. 



The shepherd has a distinct individuality, and is 

 generally a much more observant man hi his own 

 sphere than the ordinary labourer. He knows every 

 single field in the whole parish, what kind of weather 

 best suits its soil, and can tell you without going 

 within sight of a given farm pretty much what con- 

 dition it will be found in. Knowledge of this char- 

 acter may seem trivial to those whose days are passed 

 indoors ; yet it is something to recollect all the end- 

 less fields in several square miles of country. As a 

 student remembers for years the type and paper, the 

 breadth of the margin can see, as it were, before his 

 eyes the bevel of the binding and hear again the 

 rustle of the stiff leaves of some tall volume which he 

 found in a forgotten corner of a library, and bent 

 over with such delight, heedless of dust and " silver- 

 fish " and the gathered odour of years so the shep- 

 herd recalls his books, the fields ; for he, in the nature 

 of things, has to linger over them and study every 

 letter : sheep are slow. 



When the hedges are grubbed and the grass grows 

 where the hawthorn flowered, still the shepherd can 

 point out to you where the trees stood here an oak 

 and here an ash. On the hills he has often little to do 

 but ponder deeply, sitting on the turf of the slope, 

 while the sheep graze in the hollow, waiting for hours 

 as they eat their way. Therefore by degrees a habit 

 of observation grows upon him always in reference 



