278 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 

 course into the night. Farm hands may work 

 through all the days of the year ; for where there is 

 stock to be fed work is never-ceasing. Yet it is 

 reasonable to suppose that holidays are as needful 

 to the countryman as to the townsman, and that if 

 the farm labourer or the shepherd were sent away 

 to the sea every year for a fortnight's rest and 

 change, he would work with a new energy that 

 would more than compensate for the work lost. It 

 would be something at least to break the deadly 

 monotony of the daily round, even if the labourer 

 had no ideas for profitably spending a holiday. 



For the shepherd the days and nights of January 

 are heavy with responsibility he counts himself 



lucky if he can find time for an hour's sleep. 

 Folds 6 ^ * s won derful now tne shepherd of a large 



flock knows all the ewes and the lambs 

 over which he now watches. In his lambs he has a 

 personal interest, for there may be a sixpence in his 

 purse for each lamb that lives to be deprived of its 

 tail. The shepherd's knowledge of the lambs sur- 

 passes that of the ewes, whom sometimes he deceives ; 

 for it is by scent rather than sight that the mother 

 recognises her offspring, while the shepherd believes 

 only what he sees. By fastening the skin of a dead 

 lamb on to an orphan he will induce a bereaved ewe 

 to adopt the orphan, and she will accept, guard, and 

 love it as if it were her own. 



