The Chief Scout Talks

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1930, Page 21 (Supplement)

The Chief Scout Talks

ON A SHEEP FARM.

(By Lt. Gen. Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell,). I am hoping soon to re-visit Australia and New Zealand and to see something of the Scouts who have migrated there from Home, as well as the Scouts who have done all their scouting in those countries. When I was last, there,, some years ago, 1 picked up a lot of hints that may be useful to Scouts who are overseas, or are going overseas. One thing I learned was that it would be a very useful practice for Boy Scouts to learn to count sheep, 'it sounds an easy thing to do. So it may be when you have learnt how, but - it is not quite so easy as it looks. Sheep have to be counted very often when they are on the run, and a boy who shows himself good at it comes to the fore at once with the boss or mana-

ger. The “counter” stands in a gateway and sends his dog to round up the sheep and to keep them moving through the gate while he counts. . USE YOUR.BUTTONS! The sheep don’t dribble through one at a time; it would take you a month of Sundays to count them if they did. Two. or three go timidly through, then there is a rush of a dozen together. Then a few single ones scamper by, followed perhaps by a whole mob pressing and squeezing together. And'so on. A beginner cannot count fast enough and gets confused; but after a little practice you begin to know about how many sheep are in a bunch by the size

of,, it and-ybu.;jvill be jible to count by eights and tens 'at a .time. ’’ One shepherd; told pie that he taught himself to count sheep by practising with.a bottle'full He used tc lei;these trickle he counted them. At every hundred he undid a button of his. Avaistcoat and began; a fresh hundred. At first he let the peas trickle very slowly; when ’.he got 'good at it he was able to let them. run at a good pace, so that the onlooker would think it was impossible to keep count. But if the onlooker stopped him at any 1 moment and then added up the peas himself he would find that he had counted them quite correctly. So, when he came to count' sheep he was“a'Ble to db it quite well, and did not get chaffed by the old hands for making false counts as most tenderfoots ; dp. SHEARING. The wool-shed is the great centre o! work in October on a sheep run.. The sheep are brought in from the distant paddocks, penned and brought in to Be sheared. The shearing is done by men who go round from farm to farm for the purpose, and'- of course they are . pretty clever at itL On a big run some twenty or twenty-five■ shearers will le employed for some weeks, as well as an equal number of “rouseaboqts,” who are boys or less skilled' men who collect the wool as it is cut off. The shearing is done with clipping machines run by an engine. The wool has different values according to the part of the sheep from which it is taken as well as according to its length and texture. So the shearer has to be careful to take off the wool on the belly separately from that on the back as well as from, that on .-the legs and neck. And the rouseabouts/have to be careful to take ‘the different 'sorts of wool to the’ different collecting”-bins. The wool is then packed in bales by being squeezed down in hydraulic presses and stitched in canvas covers .for transport to Europe. AN AUSTRALIAN BIRD. A boy is said to have the “digestion of an ostrich” because he can eat most things and not have a pain after them. I think an emu ..would defeat him in that line. Here, is a, list of the trifles which were found inside a dead emu’s stomach —and his death was not caused ■by them either. Four pennies and five half-pennies, nine nails, five. marbles,, one pump connection,, one umbrella ferrule, one key, one medal, one watch-wheel (2| inches in diameter), two studs, three buttons, one safety pin, two staples, three wash* ers, twenty-four pieces of broken china, and a large pin embedded in his. liver., He had lost no time in starting fl museum, had he?