SAGACITY OF SHEEP.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2751, 1 March 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

SAGACITY OF SHEEP.

The following recent,and remarkable Incident may serve to dispel the erroneous impressions which most peopliV have of our 'dumb friends,' It is literally a 'true story,'not only in its miiin facts, but in every detail. I think'l am right when I say that sheep especially, so far, as sagacity are concerned," are: held in slight estimation. The term * ailly' is constantly; used when speaking Of their mental powers, but I think the following account will prove that they share with the rest of tho brute creation, a much higher order of intelligence than we often ascribe to them. A•. gentleman living near to one of the atatious on the Brigh ton line, and who, for the pleasure it gives him, farms a few hundred acres, had some forty or fifty lambs born on his land. These lambs were brought up. as is usual, by their mothers, and grazed with them iu the same meadows for some months. Of course, their pasture was often changed, the gentleman's baiiliff being careful that the animals under his charge should have every advantage. But I would have your readers note that this change of pasture was only removal from one field to another, and that on no occasion had the high road to be crossed. And now the unsentimental part of farming' had to be gone through ; for, much to the bailiff's sorrow, one fine day a butcher from the next town, fully five miles distant, came, saw the lambs, chose ten of them, and took them that afternoon by cart to Red Hill. Now between the place of which I write and Red Hill lies, besides some miles of road, a large and intricate common—such a common as would puzzle any person, unaccustomed to its many paths and drives, to find his way across. The butoher safely (as he thought) shut his newly-bought lambs into a field, and there left them. The next day, towards evening, as Mrs D , the bailiff's wife, was in the field in front of her cottage feeding the fowls, she saw five lambs come in at tho open sate—tired lambs, too, for without attempting to take a bite from tho nice fresh grass they all lay down in the middle of the field. Mrs D *8 curiosity was excited, and sho wont to look at them more closely, when, to, her surprise, she thought she recognised them as the lambs her husband had sold the day before. She waited till he came home, when, pointing out the animals to him, she inquired whether they were not those he had so lately sold. Mr D thought they were, and yet could scarcely believe ir, possible they should have found their way home all that distance, and that, too, by an intricate road, along which tliey had only once been driven. Presently a "happy thought " struck hirn. " I will let iu all the ewes," he snid, " and if any

of those lambs belong to them wo shall soon know." No sooner said than done. All t.be ewes were fetched, and then followed a pretty sight. With deliciously loving ba-a-as the little ones, with every sign of joy, rushed up to and singled out their respective mothers; whilst the mothers, for their part, were not a whit behind their offspring, by maternal lickings and as hearty though deepertoned bleats in asserting their motherhood. For one night five happy families were re-united, but with moruinu cams the inexorablo butcher, iu grout distress of mind, to ask, though with little hope, if his lambs were returned to ilieir old fields. All the , ten, had strayed away from the meadow iu which they had been placed. Five had been met with on different parts of the road, and the other five we know he found at home. The .sequel to this story is better to be imagined than described.— C.F.R.