d exhibiting it to a party of visitors, he told them of the
expedient he had adopted, and added gleefully, "I think I have bothered
them noo!"

Mr. Stephenson also carried on farming operations with some success. He
experimented on manure, and fed cattle after methods of his own. He was
very particular as to breed and build in stock-breeding. "You see, sir,"
he said to one gentleman, "I like to see the _coo's_ back at a gradient
something like this" (drawing an imaginary line with his hand), "and then
the ribs or girders will carry more flesh than if they were so--or so."
When he attended the county agricultural meetings, which he frequently
did, he was accustomed to take part in the discussions, and he brought
the same vigorous practical mind to bear upon questions of tillage,
drainage, and farm economy, which he had been accustomed to exercise on
mechanical and engineering matters.

All his early affection for birds and animals revived. He had favourite
dogs, and cows, and horses; and again he began to keep rabbits, and to
pride himself on the beauty of his breed. There was not a bird's nest
upon the grounds that he did not know of; and from day to day he went
round watching the progress which the birds made with their building,
carefully guarding them from injury. No one was more minutely acquainted
with the habits of British birds, the result of a long, loving, and close
observation of nature.

At Tapton he remembered the failure of his early experiment in hatching
birds' eggs by heat, and he now performed it successfully, being able to
secure a proper apparatus for maintaining a uniform temperature. He was
also curious about the breeding and fattening of fowls; and when his
friend Edward Pease of Darlington visited him at Tapton, he explained a
method which he had invented for fattening chickens in half the usual
time.

Mrs. Stephenson tried to keep bees, but found they would not thrive at
Tapton. Many hives perished, and there was no case of success. The
cause of failure was a puzzle to the engineer; but one day his acute
powers of observation enabled him to unravel it. At the foot of the hill
on which Tapton House stands, he saw some bees trying to rise up from
amongst the grass, laden with honey and wax. They were already
exhausted, as if with long flying; and then it occurred to him that the
height at which the house stood above the bees' feeding-ground rendered
it difficult for them to reach the