280 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



bank at random, one might say, and abundantly! I 

 followed my young ones just now into old Melon's fruit- 

 rooms. How they did pocket, the old fellow bursting 

 with delight as he looked on ! And then, when the 

 crop is on the trees, how they eat all day long between 

 school-hours, and seem never the worse, dinner only 

 being worse for it, as their appetites, to my sorrow, 

 seem rather whetted than appeased ! 



It is no wonder that the vegetarian badger loves the 

 district. There is such a fine fellow has his lair under a 

 rock adjacent to this, close to which he has a raised seat, 

 worn quite hollow on the top, like an ostrich's nest. 

 The labourers call it his " Sunday seat." It commands 

 a magnificent view of the surrounding country. 



There has been hot work amongst the fox covers on 

 the further side of the county, in consecjuence of which 

 Mr. Reynard has migrated to our inaccessible strong- 

 holds. You may hear him bark every evening about 

 nightfall. One fox feasted last week on a guinea-fowl 

 of ours, and winked his eye grandly at the traps all 

 around, which I found the angry bailiff had soothed his 

 wrath by setting. The red robber I love to see so 

 stealthily slipping through the gorse, and am only vexed 

 when, as I saw him the other day, he will keep whirling 

 around his head, then tossing up and catching and re- 

 tossing an unhappy rabbit, neutralizing by his conduct 

 any sympathy on my part which might have arisen from 

 Mr. Freeman's attacks upon huntsmen. 



May, 1870. 

 " Good news from home " — nay, rather sad news from 

 farm. I say nothing of the murderous conduct of the 

 frost towards the young ley-planted wheats, nor of the 



