216 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



inches square. Happening to pass just afterwards, I 

 saw her with apparently a clot of gore hanging from 

 her neck. Having had her caught, the wound fortu- 

 nately proved not deep, so I sewed up the rag of skin, 

 after washing the bare surface with calendula and water, 

 and to-day she seems to be going on well. She was a 

 rare racer in her time, anji I don't want to lose her yet, 

 although her colts differ much, and breeding does not 

 pay. We had some precious calves born the other 

 morning, which gave some trouble in the delivery. 

 One cow is positively fit for the butcher, and yet they 

 have been feeding all the winter upon only a mixture 

 of chaff more than half straw, with sufiicient pulped 

 mangold to moisten it, and a few handfuls of bran 

 strewn upon the feed. 



It has just happened to me casually to overhear a 

 discussion carried on between Mamma and one of the 

 young men as to the food supplied to the rabbits, in 

 the course of which, after dilating upon the various 

 qualities of the several kinds of food they obtain, in 

 answer to an inquiry, he gravely informed her that it 

 would not do to give them wheat, because it would 

 " button them up " at once. Mamma was clearly puzzled 

 by such a plain expression for the binding property of 

 this grain, and I left her to his enlightenment, being 

 sufi&ciently amused by the native eloquence of my son. 

 Yesterday there was great grief throughout the nursery 

 in consequence of a pet ferret having been accidentally 

 shot by the man-servant, who during some sport in the 

 woods, had shot the poor animal as it came hunying 

 out after a rabbit that had bolted. They had nursed it 

 from its infancy, and it was certainly a very pretty 

 sight to see it with its back arched playfully, jumping 



