76 SKETCHES OP RURAL AFFAIRS. 



bespeak the healthy condition of his charge. The lamb- 

 ing season is in February and March, and is an anxious 

 time for all who are concerned with flocks ; the shep- 

 herd has to be on the alert night and day. The lambs, 

 when born, are sometimes nearly lifeless, and without 

 the care of the shepherd would certainly perish. Either 

 they are so weak that they cannot stand up to suck, or 

 they are so little alive that the greatest care is necessary 

 to restore animation. In these cases the shepherd takes 

 the ewe with her young to a place of shelter, where they 

 can be attended to, or he puts the half-dead lamb into a 

 basket with some wool, and keeps it near his cottage fire, 

 where his wife takes care of it, and now and then pours 

 a little warm milk down its throat 



When the ewes have twins, they are well supplied 

 with food, that they may be able to support this double 

 charge. But it often happens that the ewe beats off one 

 of the lambs, as if conscious that she could not support 

 both ; and if the shepherd cannot reconcile the mother 

 to her offspring, he has to seek elsewhere for the means 

 of nourishing the poor little outcast. He therefore takes 

 it to some desolate mother who has lost her lamb, and 

 who is, perhaps, piteously bleating over the dead body. 

 But he cannot prevail upon her to receive the stranger 

 without employing a little deception. Taking away the 

 carcass of the dead lamb, he strips off the skin, and fits 

 it as well as he can to the body of the living one. A 

 strange figure does the little stranger cut, thus dressed 

 up in another's fleece : but if taken in the twilight to the 

 mourning ewe, she smells the skin of her own offspring, 

 and welcomes the wearer of it with delight. The little 

 starving creature gladly takes to her as its mother, and 

 when daylight comes she does not cast it off, but loads 

 it with caresses and marks of affection ; although to 

 other eyes the cheat is plain enough, for the false skin 

 hangs loosely about, and those parts which covered the 

 legs flap up and down as the lamb runs about the pas- 

 ture. In a few days the skin is removed, without 



