191. Goats do not _ramble_ from home. They come in regularly in the evening, and if called, they come like dogs. Now, though ewes, when taken great care of, will be very gentle, and though their milk may be rather more delicate than that of the goat, the ewes must be fed with nice and clean food, and they will not do much in the milk-giving way upon a common; and, as to _feeding them_, provision must be made pretty nearly as for a cow. They will not endure _confinement_ like goats; and they are subject to numerous ailments that goats know nothing of. Then the ewes are done by the time they are about six years old; for they then lose their teeth; whereas a goat will continue to breed and to give milk in abundance for a great many years. The sheep is _frightened_ at everything, and especially at the least sound of a dog. A goat, on the contrary, will _face a dog_, and if he be not a big and courageous one, beat him off. 192. I have often wondered how it happened that none of our labourers kept goats; and I really should be glad to see the thing tried. They are pretty creatures, domestic as a dog, will stand and watch, as a dog does, for a crumb of bread, as you are eating; give you no trouble in the milking; and I cannot help being of opinion, that it might be of great use to introduce them amongst our labourers. CANDLES AND RUSHES. 193. We are not permitted to make candles ourselves, and if we were, they ought seldom to be used in a labourer's family. I was bred and brought up mostly by _rush-light_, and I do not find that I see less clearly than other people. Candles certainly were not much used in English labourers' dwellings in the days when they had meat dinners and Sunday coats. Potatoes and taxed candles seem to have grown into fashion together; and, perhaps, for this reason: that when the pot ceased to afford _grease_ for the rushes, the potatoe-gorger was compelled to go to the chandler's shop for light to swallow the potatoes by, else he might have devoured peeling and all! 194. My grandmother, who lived to be pretty nearly ninety, never, I believe, burnt a candle in her house in her life. I know that I never saw one there, and she, in a great measure, brought me up. She used to get the meadow-rushes, such as they tie the hop-shoots to the poles with. She cut them when they had attained their full substance, but were still _green_. The rush at this age, consists of a body of _pith_ with a green _skin_ on it. You cut off both ends of the rush, and leave the prime part, which, on an average, may be about a foot and a half long. Then you take off all the green skin, except for about a fifth part of the way round the pith. Thus it is a piece of pith all but a little strip of skin in one part all the way up, which, observe, is necessary to hold the pith together all the way along.