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 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUE FAEM. 225 



doubtful whether they were worth thinning. I ordered 

 the operation to be gone through with, however, as it 

 had been begun, and, thanks to the mild winter we have 

 had, there came up a fair quantity of small bulbs, which 

 have been of great service to us. Some of the young 

 charlock escaped the hoe, and last month raised a 

 flourishing top amidst the swede rows. I was sorry that 

 any had been hoed off at all ; for the sheep clearly pre- 

 ferred them to the swedes, as the fly is said to do when 

 they are in their infant stage. 



Thankful are we that the late sudden inclement 

 weather hath taken its departure. For the last few days 

 it was impossible to believe that we had been sunning 

 ourselves but a week gone by, so pleasantly the day 

 through, upon the open lawn slopes. The poor willow, 

 that looked so lovely in the fresh fulness of its pendent 

 foliage, got its tresses nipped by that treacherous on- 

 slaught of keen frost, and old Melon predicts its having 

 had a squeak for life itself. 



What a variety of disaster the agriculturist has to 

 struggle against ? Here, now, is corn down with a run : 

 and will it go no further, I wonder ? And we must 

 thrash for straw ; and six of our best lambs have perished 

 in the course of a couple of days — some, I think, from 

 the shepherd's incautiously introducing them too sud- 

 denly into an exuberance of young grass, and one at 

 least from being sanded up, as a pony of ours was two 

 years ago. The Wye flood leaves a deposit of sand upon 

 the adjacent herbage, which has a deleterious, if not a 

 deadly, effect upon all stock that grazes it before it has 

 been well washed with rain. One of the little girls' pet 

 lambs was found dead, too, in that hot weather; from 

 apoplexy, I suspect, or " braxy," as the Scotch shepherds 



