130 ©6©9Wild Lifein a Southern County. 
may be’called the household memory, the very races 
of animals have changéd or been supplanted. The 
cows in the field used to: be longhorns, much more 
hardy, and remaining in the meadows all the winter, 
with no better shelter than the hedges and bushes 
afforded. Now the shorthorns have come, and the 
cattle are housed carefully. The sheep were horned 
—up in the lumber-room two or three horns are still 
to be found. The pigs were of a different kind, and 
the dogs and poultry. If the race of men have not 
changed they have altered their costume ; the smock- 
frock lingered longest, but even that is going. 
‘Some of the old superstitions hung on till quite 
recently. The value of horses made the arrival of 
foals an important occasion, and then it was the 
custom to call in the assistance of an aged man of 
wisdom—not exactly a wizard, but something ap- 
proaching it nearly in reputation. Even within the 
last fifteen years the aid of an ancient like this used to 
be regularly invoked in this neighbourhood; in some 
mysterious way his simple presence and good-will— 
gained by plentiful liquor—was supposed to be effica- 
cious against accident and loss. The strangeness of the 
business was in the fact that his patrons were not 
altogether ignorant or even uneducated—they merely 
carried on the old custom, not from faith in it, but 
just because it was the custom. When the wizard at 
last died nothing more was thought about it. Another 
ancient’used to come round once or twice in the year, 
