universal hostile rage; and it gladdened my fancy with the contemplation
of those days of heavenly harmony, promised in the predictions of
eternal truth, when man, freed at length from prejudice and passion,
shall seek his happiness in cultivating the mild, the benevolent, and
the merciful sensibilities of his nature; and when the animal world,
catching the virtues of its lord and master, shall soften into
gentleness and love; when the wolf"....

And so on, clause after clause, with others to be added, until the whole
sentence becomes as long as a fishing-rod. But apart from the
fiddlededee, is the thing he states believable? It is a charming
picture, and one would like to know more about that "chaunt," that "wild
melody." The passage aroused my curiosity when in Cornwall, as it had
appeared to me that in no part of England are the domestic animals so
little considered by their masters. The R.S.P.C.A. is practically
unknown there, and when watching the doings of shepherds or drovers with
their sheep the question has occurred to me, What would my Wiltshire
shepherd friends say of such a scene if they had witnessed it? There is
nothing in print which I can find to confirm Warner's observations, and
if you inquire of very old men who have been all their lives on the soil
they will tell you that there has never been such a custom in their
time, nor have they ever heard of it as existing formerly. Warner's Tour
through Cornwall is dated 1808.

I take it that he described a scene he actually witnessed, and that he
jumped to the conclusion that it was a common custom for the ploughman
to sing to his oxen. It is not unusual to find a man anywhere singing to
his oxen, or horses, or sheep, if he has a voice and is fond of
exercising it. I remember that in a former book--"Nature in Downland"--I
described the sweet singing of a cow-boy when tending his cows on a