The Spinning-W heel. 69 
enough. Only if driven bya strange dog, and unable 
to escape on account of a wall or enclosure, will they 
ever rush intoa pond. Ifasheep gets into a brook 
and cannot get out—his narrow feet sink deep into 
the mud—should he not be speedily relieved he will 
die, even though his head be above water, from chill 
and fright. Cattle, on the other hand, love to stand 
in water on a warm day. 
In rubbing together and struggling with the 
shepherds and their assistants a good deal of wool is 
torn from the sheep and floats down the current. 
This is: caught by a net stretched across below, and 
finally comes into the possession of one or two old 
women of the village, who seem to have a prescriptive 
right to it, on payment of a small toll for beer-money. 
These women are also on the look-out during the 
year for such stray scraps of wool as they can pick 
up from the bushes beside the roads and lanes much 
travelled by sheep—also from the tall thistles and 
briars, where they have got through a gap. This 
wool is more or less stained by the weather and by 
particles of dust, but it answers the purpose, which is 
the manufacture of mops. 
The old-fashioned wool mop is still a necessary 
adjunct of the farmhouse, and especially the dairy, 
which has to be constantly ‘swilled’ out and mopped 
clean. With the ancient spinning-wheel they work 
up the wool thus gathered ; and so, even at this late 
day, in odd nooks and corners, the wheel may now. 
