COUNTRY LADS. 31 



working farmers exhibit the same peculiarity, and although 

 their food is not luxurious in quality, it is certainly not 

 stinted in quantity. Some of the ploughboys and carters' 

 lads seem scarcely fit to be put in charge of the huge cart- 

 horses who obey their shouted orders, their heads being 





c-ou 



SMALL BOYS AND GREAT HORSES. 



but a little way above the shafts mere infants to look at. 

 Yet they are fourteen or fifteen years of age. 'With these, 

 and with the sons of farmers who in like manner work in 

 the field, the period of development comes later than with 

 town-bred boys. After sixteen or eighteen, after years of 



