After the disastrous wet season of 1879 immense losses ensued from the prevalence of the fatal liver rot; many thousands of sheep were sold at the auctions for 3s. or 4s. apiece, and sound mutton was exceedingly scarce and dear.  It was represented to a very August personage, that if the people could be induced to forgo the consumption of lamb, these in due course would grow into sheep, and the price of mutton would be reduced.  Accordingly an order was issued forbidding the appearance of lamb on the Court tables.  It had not occurred to the proposer of this scheme that a scarcity of food for the developing lambs would result, nor was it understood that the producers of fat lambs make special cropping arrangements for their keep, with the object of clearing out their stock about Easter, in time to plough the ground, and follow the roots where the ewes and lambs have been feeding, with barley.  The “classes” copied the example of the Court, as in duty bound, and the demand fell to zero.  But the lambs had to be sold for the reasons mentioned, and, in the absence of the usual demand, the unfortunate producers offered them at almost any price.  The miners and the pottery workers in Staffordshire were not so loyal as the “classes”; they welcomed the unusual opportunity of buying early lamb at 9d. a pound, and trains composed entirely of trucks full of lambs from the south of England to the Midlands supplied them abundantly.

The edict, when its effect was apparent, was therefore revoked, but it was too late, the lambs were gone, and as everybody was hungry for his usual Easter lamb, the demand was immense, and the price rose in proportion.  I had thirty or forty lambs intended for the Easter markets, and had, with great difficulty and the sacrifice of grass which should have stood for hay, managed to keep them on, scarcely knowing what to do with them.  But the sudden demand arose just in time, and I sent them to the Alcester auction sale, where buyers from Birmingham and the neighbourhood attend in large numbers.  A capital sale resulted, the price going as high as 60s., in those days a big figure for lambs about four months old.  I was so pleased with the result and my deliverance from the dilemma, that, passing through the town on my way home, and spying an old Worcester china cup and saucer, and a bowl oL the same, all with the rare square mark, I invested some of my plunder in what time has proved an excellent speculation, and my cabinet is still decorated with these mementoes, which I never see without calling to mind the story of the lamb edict and its result.

During the Great War some controlling wiseacre evolved precisely the same scheme for bringing about an imaginary increase in the supply of mutton, by prohibiting the slaughter of any lambs until June.  The Dorset breeders, who buy in ewes at high prices for the special production of early lamb—­the lambs of this breed are born in October and November—­were more particularly affected, and the absurdity of the prohibition having been later represented to the authorities, the order was withdrawn, though not before great loss and difficulty were inflicted upon the unfortunate producers.  It goes to prove the necessity of the administration of such matters by competent men, and how easily apparently sound theory in inexperienced hands may conflict with economical practice.