Each fold or pen has by this arrangement an odd number of sheep within the hurdles that form its outer boundaries, and in this sense the farmer’s wish was satisfied.
We are familiar, most of us, with what is called Macaronic verse or prose, in which the letters and syllables of Latin words can be read so as to form English sentences.
It would seem to be too much to expect that there could be any connection in meaning between these Latin and English words, but there is one striking exception to this general rule. “Non est” means exactly “it is not,” and “No nest” conveys precisely the same idea, when a bird finds that its home has been destroyed.
No. LXII.—LEAP-FROG
Here is an interesting puzzle which can be worked out with coins or counters on a corner of a chess or a draughtboard.
At starting only the central point is vacant. A piece that is moved to a vacant spot must leap over two other pieces if it goes along the solid black lines, and can only move over one of the dotted diagonals at a time to an adjoining point. Try, on these lines, to enable the frog, now in the second hole of the lowest row, to reach the centre in the fewest possible moves, leaving its own original point vacant, and at the last surrounded by the words “leap-frog” as they now stand.
Moves can only be made to vacant places.