152 FIELD AND FERN. 



sheep are duly ticketed, and tlie names of tlie flock 

 labelled on the pen. Some auctioneers can sell eighty 

 in an hour, but a ram a minute is the general cal- 

 culation. It is very hard work to begin at ten 

 with only four rings, and to sell off by five. Bid- 

 dings beyond .£5 are all by five shillings, and they 

 quite reverse the line, " I^d rather have a guinea 

 than a one-pound note." 



The different styles of the auctioneers are most 

 delightful to a stranger, and after we had been once 

 or twice among the pens, the spirit was ever moving us 

 to make tours of inspection, simply for comparison. 

 The dramatic, the impulsive, the crisp, the melan- 

 choly, and the homely styles, all had their interpreters. 

 We heard no home-thrust like that once delivered by 

 the late Mr. Fairbairn, when he had sold a topper : 

 " Now, Sir ! your flock has been fallinxj off for some 

 years : you've got the sheep to suit you'' They did 

 not rise beyond, "Look at that sheep, and waken 

 up /" and some such antidotes to sloth, or assurances 

 that he was " clipped in June as bare as a vegetable 

 board; and look at him now I" Then the word went 

 round that the Polwarth lot, which is as keenly 

 looked for here as Mr. Cookson's at Doncaster, was 

 going to be put up, and the audience at rings 2, 3, 

 and 4 begin to thin rapidly. The few remnants of 

 the preceding lot only acted as a whet. " A £5 note 

 for a start of him," says the auctioneer, a sterling- 

 looking fellow, with a little switch for a hammer, and 

 a supply of good, sound Border Doric, which falls quite 



