Dog Folding a Flock. 85 
no concern for the young to which they gave birth but a few 
days before. Predatory birds and animals hanging about 
the feeding ground make short work of these derelicts unless 
they are recovered before night. My retriever took upon himself 
the duty of looking after these lambs, and he performed it 
in a highly benevolent and conscientious manner. He would 
quarter the ground systematically, and on finding a lamb 
give it a shove with his nose, driving it towards the flock. 
If, as was more likely than not, the stupid thing persisted 
in going off in the wrong direction, he would call my atten- 
tion to the difficulty by barking, or ozcasionally endeavour 
to pick it up and carry it. Thus he saved, both in Australia and 
South America, enough lambs to make a pretty fair flock. 
Whether lambs thus neglected by their mothers are worth 
the trouble they give may be doubted, for they only maintain 
a precarious subsistence by snatching a little milk here and 
there from any ewes good-natured enough to allow them 
to draw on their supply for a few moments, and become 
weakly from semi-starvation and being compelled to eat 
grass before they are old enough to digest it. 
When the shepherd has brought his flock home to the 
fold, his work is by no means over. On the contrary, the 
most tiresome business of the day begins there. The ewes 
walk in at the gate without ado, but their lambs consider 
this the time for high jinks. They will race round and 
round the fold, taking excursions now and then in a long 
stream to some distance, and coming back to pass the gate 
again and again, as if no opening existed. This wearisome 
game is often kept up for an hour, to no little annoyance of 
the shepherd, who wants to get to his supper. Time after 
time, when he has laboriously collected the stragglers and 
brought the whole lot quietly up to the gate, they divide 
into two streams and race off in opposite directions. I have 
seen three or four men thus engaged with a thousand lambs, 
not a score of which were driven into the fold in half an 
hour. One evening on the La Plata I was riding by an 
