Of late years the competition of the importations of New Zealand lamb has reduced the price of English lamb to an unremunerative level.  This thin dry stuff bears about the same resemblance to real fat home-grown lamb, as do the proverbial chalk and cheese to each other; but it is good enough for the restaurants and eating-houses; and the consumer who lacks the critical faculty of the connoisseur in such matters, devours his “Canterbury” lamb, well disguised with mint sauce, in sublime ignorance, and, apparently, without missing the succulence of the real article—­convinced as he is that it was produced in the neighbourhood of the cathedral city of the same name, and unaware of the existence of such a place as Canterbury in New Zealand, or that the name, if not exactly a fraud, is calculated to mislead.  Doubtless it is the mint sauce that satisfies the uncritical palate.  Just as the boy who, when asked after a treat of oysters how he liked them, said with gusto, “The oysters was good, but the vinegar and pepper was delicious!”

It is well known that there is a tendency among men in charge of special kinds of domestic animals gradually to approximate to them in appearance, and we are told that men sometimes gradually acquire a resemblance to men they admire.  I knew a pedigree-pig herdsman, very successful in the show-ring, who was curiously like his charges, and I had at least two shepherds whose profiles were extraordinarily sheepish—­though not in the ordinary acceptation of the term.  Such an appearance confers a singularly simple expression.  It must have been a man whose character justified such a facial peculiarity, who, having to bring the flock of one of my neighbours over a railway crossing between two of his fields, neglected to open the further gate first, drove the sheep on to the rails, and proceeded to do so, only to find the sheep, in the meantime, had wandered down the line.  Before he could collect them a train dashed into them, and many were killed and others injured.  The railway company not only repudiated all liability, but sent in a counterclaim for damage to their engine!

But the tables were turned morally, if not actually, by a friend of mine, who certainly scored off a railway company.  My friend’s waggon, with two horses and a load of hay, was passing over a level crossing on his land, when the London express came into view slinging downhill in all the majesty of triumphant speed, but far enough away to be brought up in time, ignominiously and abruptly.  The railway company wrote my friend a letter of remonstrance suggestive of pains and penalties, and telling him that his waggoner should have made sure of the safety of crossing before attempting it—­not an easy thing to do at this particular place.  My friend replied that his right of way existed centuries before the railway was dreamed of, that the crossing was a concession for the company’s convenience, it had saved the expense of a bridge, and that his hay was an urgent matter in view of the weather; and that uninterrupted harvesting was of more importance than the punctuality of their passengers.