There is much that is interesting in the management of the sheep flock. From April 6th to September 18th the sheep fed by day on the down, and were folded by night on the fallow field. The fold began at the top of the field, and gradually worked downwards, covering about half-an-acre every night, and so manuring the whole. There being no other water supply on the downs, all the tenants had to take turns to carry up water to fill the water-troughs, and the viewers saw that they did so. On September 18th the sheep came into the “hatching ground,” on which, as we have seen, clover had been sown; and it is noticeable that this crop, sown individually by each copyholder on his own lands, was fed off by the common flock under the supervision of the common shepherd. In winter the sheep belonging to each tenant had to be folded separately; and the doles and new closes were used for wintering the sheep. Some made it a practice to sell off their flock when feed became scanty, and to buy again the next spring; but the traditional custom was to keep the sheep till they were four or five years old, at which age they became fat, perhaps by superior cunning; meanwhile, of course, they had been yielding wool and manure. In later years, though every half living was entitled to forty sheep, by a common agreement the number was limited to twenty-five in spring, and later in the year to thirty-five, when the lambs reached the age at which they were counted as sheep in the calculation of common rights. Perhaps the most curious feature in the local system of agriculture was the management of the common meadow. Sheep were allowed in it from March 1st to April 6th (it would only bear ten or eleven), then they had to come out and join the common flock, and the grass was let grow to hay. At hay time the viewers went out and by the help of some almost imperceptible ridges in the soil, and certain pegs driven into the river banks, they marked out to each tenant the plots on which he was allowed to cut and gather the hay. There were forty-seven of these little plots; twenty-seven of them were definite parts of particular copyholds, but nineteen were “changeable allotments,” each of which belonged one year to one holding, the next year to another, according to certain rules; while the remaining allotment, a little three-cornered plot in the middle called “100 Acres,” amounting perhaps to five perches in area, was divided among the holders of the adjacent “Long lands.” On July 6th, the hay having been carried, the cows came in, and grazed in the meadow till November 23rd, and then the meadow was watered. [Illustration: STRATTON MEADOW Scale 1:2500]