184 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



advertisement cakes' sugar roof, or (to set our meta- 

 phor in unison with the season) 



" As autumn leaves that strew the brooks 

 In Vallambrosa, where the Etrurian shades 

 High over-arch'd embower." 



Anyhow, this abundance of shed seed took advan- 

 tage of the first shower to vegetate, and the lawn is 

 now one carpet of tiny heart-shaped and round leaves. 

 I argue thus then: the roller, the sheep's tooth, the 

 lawn-mower, all cut so close or bruise the swollen limbs 

 of the coarser grasses so, (intense heat, again, being 

 adverse to their swelling at all) that something ap- 

 proaching to mortification ensues, or, if not quite that, 

 at least considerable contusion ; such as sends them 

 into the hospital's compulsory confinement, of which 

 the smaller plants take advantage, so as to have their 

 little strut upon the stage of life. 



I have been obhged to write at a gallop, as the hour 

 of shooting approaches — an exercise to which I am 

 rendered almost averse, by the dumb expostulation of 

 some half dozen young pheasants that have flown up 

 just now to be fed at my study window. The nest was 

 cut-over by the mowers in a meadow, and the hatching 

 was carried out by a half-bred Lucknow-bantam, which, 

 possibly, from its half-wild Indian tastes and tendency, 

 stuck more affectionately to its strange offspring than I 

 ever knew a barn-door fowl do before. Every evening, 

 when they had grown quite as big as herself, they used 

 to fly up and perch upon a pole we fixed across a coach- 

 house, and every morning she brought them round to 

 our lawn windows to be fed, until one day there was 

 great consternation in the nursery. The naughty hen 



