MARCH. 43 



plenty of food for the growing stock. So the spring- 

 ing grass and the jumping lamb come in together. 

 Viewed by itself, the acrobatic activity of a lamb 

 seems about as inconsequential and meaningless a 

 performance as can be conceived. Perhaps this is 

 why it is so delicious to watch that it is all pure 

 farce. While you are watching a lamb standing per- 

 fectly still with that pathetic look of inquiry upon its 

 face that marks the young of most animals, you might 

 think that it was wondering why its brief summer of 

 life should end as mutton, when suddenly it proceeds, 

 by a series of comical " cavorts " on four stiff legs, to 

 nowhere in particular ; and when a number of lambs 

 have collected together, if one goes leaping off all the 

 others must go leaping too. 



A PLAYGROUND PRECIPICE. 



It may seem ridiculous that a lamb should practise 

 jumping all day in order to develop into a peaceful, 

 stolid, steady-going sheep later ; but the young of 

 all creatures reproduce the characteristics of their 

 kind in an earlier stage of existence, and an expert 

 evolutionist who had never seen or heard of sheep 

 before would only need to watch lambs at play for 

 a few minutes to decide that their wild ancestors 

 haunted mountains. There is a pasture here, some 

 fifty acres of land, without a bank or a crease in it 

 anywhere except along one margin where a cart- 

 track runs. The wheels and the horses' hoofs have 

 cut this strip of soil into four ridges ; and no matter 

 in what part of the fifty acres the lambs may have 

 to leave their mothers, it is to these ridges that they 



