96 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
use it in cities, carrying it by the knob or handle; it 
is a staff rather than a stick, the upper end projecting 
six or eight inches above the hand. 
If any labourers deserve to be paid well, it is the 
shepherds: upon their knowledge and fidelity the 
principal profit of a whole season depends on so many 
farms. On the bleak hills in lambing time the 
greatest care is necessary ; and the fold, situated in a 
hollow if possible, with the down rising on the east or 
north, is built as it were of straw walls, thick and 
warm, which the sheep soon make hollow inside, and 
thus have a cave in which to nestle. 
The shepherd has a distinct individuality, and is 
generally a much more observant man in his own 
sphere than the ordinary labourer. He knows every 
single field in the whole parish, what kind of weather 
best suits its soil, and can tell you without going 
within sight of a given farm pretty much what con- 
dition it will be found in. Knowledge of this cha- 
racter may seem trivial to those whose days are 
passed indoors ; yet it is something to recollect all 
the endless fields in several square miles of country. 
Asa student remembers for years the type and paper, 
the breadth of the margin—can see, as it were, before 
his eyes the bevel of the binding and hear again the 
rustle of the stiff leaves of some tall volume which he 
found in a forgotten corner of alibrary, and bent over 
with such delight, heedless of dust and ‘silver-fish’ 
and the gathered odour of years—so the shepherd 
