128 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



distance from his shepherd ; it would remove all 

 friction and simplify things generally to put the 

 shepherd on the same level with the field labourer 

 and other servants ; and this was done by giving him 

 a shilling more a week in exchange for the four or 

 five or six lambs he had been accustomed to receive 

 every year. 



There have been other although less important 

 changes in the life of the lonely man who follows his 

 flock on the hills : one that has a special interest for 

 me refers to the annual wheatear harvest, which was 

 formerly a source of considerable profit to the shep- 

 herds of the South Downs. Those who engaged in 

 taking the birds were accustomed to make each season 

 from four or five pounds to twenty — occasionally 

 thirty or forty — pounds. A few shepherds have been 

 known to make as much as fifty pounds. Thus the 

 most successful actually made more by wheatear 

 catching from July to September than the farmers 

 paid them for the whole year's shepherding. It is 

 sometimes said that wheatears are not now eaten, and 

 that the shepherds no longer take them, because the 

 birds are now so few in number that it would not be 

 worth any one's while to catch them. There is no 

 doubt that they have decreased very much ; but they 

 are still eaten, though the shepherds do not catch 

 them, and, as we shall see presently, the complaint 

 that they have decreased is so old that we read of its 

 having been made a century ago. 



