tering-pot in the other! Last year there had been nearly as much
mathern (wild camomile) and willow-wind (convolvulus and buckwheat) as
crop, and he did not want to see the colt's tail in the sky so often
again. The colt's tail is a cloud with a bushy appearance like a
ragged fringe, and portends rain.

I remarked that it was curious how thunderstorms sometimes returned on
the same day of the week and at the same hour for a month running.
Hilary said they had been known to return every day at the same hour.
The most regular operation on a farm is the milking: one summer his
fogger declared it came on to thunder day after day in the afternoon
just as he took his yoke off his shoulders. Such heavy and continuous
downpour not only laid the crops, but might spoil them altogether; for
laid barley had been known to sprout there and then, and was of course
totally spoiled. It was a mistake to associate thunder solely with hot
weather; the old folk used to say that it was never too cold to
thunder and never too warm to snow.

A sweet yet faintly pungent odour came on the light breeze over the
next field--a scent like clover, but with a slight reminiscence of the
bean-flower. It arose from the yellow flower of the hop-trefoil: honey
sometimes has a flavour which resembles it. The hop-trefoil is a
favourite crop for sheep, but Hilary said it was too soft for horses.
The poppies were not yet out in the wheat. When in full bloom some of
the cottagers gather the scarlet flowers in great quantities and from
them make poppy wine. This liquor has a fine colour and is very heady,
and those who make it seem to think much of it. Upon the hills where
furze grows plentifully the flowers are also collected, and a dye
extracted from them. Ribbons can thus be dyed a bright yellow, but it
requires a large quantity of the flowers.

A little farther a sheep-dog looked at us from a gateway; and on
coming nearer we found the shepherd busily engaged cutting the feet of
his sheep one by one with a keen knife. They had got the foot-rot down
in a meadow--they do not suffer from it on the arable uplands where
folded--and the shepherd was now applying a caustic solution. Every
shepherd has his own peculiar specific, which he believes to be the
only certain remedy.

Tar is used in the sheepfold, just as it used to be when sweet
Dowsabell went forth to gather honeysuckle and lady's-smock nearly
three centuries since. For the shepherd with whom she fell