128 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



MAN AND COW AS CO-WORKERS. 



By G. M. GowEll, Professor of Animal Industry, University 



of Maine. 



It is a truth as old as time, that every plant and creature 

 adapts itself to place and circumstance, or dies in the attempt. 

 If conditions are better than those which had previously attended 

 it, it improves and its offspring develop into higher orders and 

 capacities. If conditions are poorer than those under which it 

 spent its earlier life, it yields to them, and finally, if the same 

 environment continues for a few generations there may be devel- 

 oped a family that is peculiarly adapted to endure, and even 

 thrive, where its predecessor found life almost unendurable. 

 These are Nature's laws, and they are simply the laws of adap- 

 tation. 



It was a peculiar environment that developed the New Eng- 

 land countrymen. They were born of an ancestry that had spent 

 its life in the open air in the rugged struggle for existence and 

 homes. They were cradled in rockers made from pine boards 

 by the fathers' hands, or sung to sleep as they lay in the laps of 

 the mothers who had nourished them. As boys they were clad 

 in homespun, made by the hands of their mothers, from the wool 

 which the boys themselves had clipped from the backs of the 

 sheep, which were then a part of the stock of every farm. 



Their food was homely but appetizing and nutritious. The 

 great brick ovens in every kitchen were heated on every Satur- 

 day, and Sunday mornings when the doors were opened and the 

 great pots of beans and pork, and the loaves of rye and Indian 

 bread and pumpkin pies were drawn out, the family table was 

 loaded with a feast which was eaten only after the mercy of 

 God was acknowledged by the father for permitting the existence 

 of his family, and His blessings for the future implored. 



The food obtained from the ovens was supplemented, as the 

 week wore on, by boiled dinners of salted and corned meats, and 

 potatoes, cabbage and turnips. The tin bakers yielded their 



