THE DAILY LIFE OF OUE FAJiM. 5 



that once, under the training of Culshaw, wrought 

 wonders at the Paris and SaKsbury Shows. Swimming 

 around and about her, steering handily on their pivots 

 as a gunboat or the Alabama, were some dear domesti- 

 cated pet wild ducks, popping up and catching the flies 

 from the cow's white skin, and almost before they 

 settled there nipping them off, to her evident relief and 

 their own private satisfaction. It was a delightful con- 

 trast for the contemplation of the indolent. The placid, 

 white old cow in the red-marl-stained water, with the 

 feathered fleet of quackers cruising happily around, and 

 doing her kind service, while they fed themselves, and 

 helped to diminish the plague that is quite besetting 

 this district at present. 



This fly abomination ! Can it be that the hatches 

 intended for next year are being already quickened by 

 the unusual heat, just as we read of the young croco- 

 diles bursting through the crust of hardened mud under 

 Mungo Park's bed in the desert, having had their egg- 

 covering prematurely chipped by that worthy's weight 

 or warmth. 



How devoutly do I not hope that it is so ! Then 

 deliverance for the muslin curtain and the whitened 

 ceiling which are now so cruelly bespattered and de- 

 stroyed ! Then good riddance of the villain swarm that 

 gathers in the beer-tap and does its best to be swallowed 

 in a dozen household shapes ! 



But to return to ducks and their effect upon the 

 meat question. How thankful am I not that I took 

 such pains early in the spring to see that the greatest 

 possible multitude should be reared from our hens and 

 ducks ! Have we not such an array of the last — such 

 an army of the former, that our neighbouring friends. 



