s to
ruin the man who owns him. With this object in view he will display a
talent for getting into trouble and a genius for dying that are almost
incredible.

If a mob of sheep see a bush fire closing round them, do they run away
out of danger? Not at all, they rush round and round in a ring till the
fire burns them up. If they are in a river-bed, with a howling flood
coming down, they will stubbornly refuse to cross three inches of water
to save themselves. Dogs may bark and men may shriek, but the sheep
won't move. They will wait there till the flood comes and drowns them
all, and then their corpses go down the river on their backs with their
feet in the air.

A mob will crawl along a road slowly enough to exasperate a snail, but
let a lamb get away in a bit of rough country, and a racehorse can't
head him back again. If sheep are put into a big paddock with water in
three corners of it, they will resolutely crowd into the fourth, and die
of thirst.

When being counted out at a gate, if a scrap of bark be left on the
ground in the gateway, they will refuse to step over it until dogs and
men have sweated and toiled and sworn and "heeled 'em up", and "spoke
to 'em", and fairly jammed them at it. At last one will gather courage,
rush at the fancied obstacle, spring over it about six feet in the air,
and dart away. The next does exactly the same, but jumps a bit higher.
Then comes a rush of them following one another in wild bounds like
antelopes, until one overjumps himself and alights on his head. This
frightens those still in the yard, and they stop running out.

Then the dogging and shrieking and hustling and tearing have to be gone
through all over again. (This on a red-hot day, mind you, with clouds
of blinding dust about, the yolk of wool irritating your eyes, and,
perhaps, three or four thousand sheep to put through). The delay throws
out the man who is counting, and he forgets whether he left off at 45
or 95. The dogs, meanwhile, have taken the first chance to slip over
the fence and hide in the shade somewhere, and then there are loud
whistlings and oaths, and calls for Rover and Bluey. At last a
dirt-begrimed man jumps over the fence, unearths Bluey, and hauls him
back by the ear. Bluey sets to work barking and heeling-'em up again,
and pretends that he thoroughly enjoys it; but all the while he is
looking out for another chance to "clear". And _this_ time he won't be
discovered in a hurry.

There is a w