DAIRY MEETING. 75 



and Stand on their heads and drink through the ice — and we 

 agree perfectly. I think it was John Gould who said that every 

 time a cow filled up on fifty pounds of ice. water she lowered 

 her temperature so that she went half way to death — and he 

 was pretty near right. We run a steam pipe into our trough 

 and raise the temperature of the water to 60 degrees and the 

 animals drink from fifty to seventy pounds at a time and never 

 chill, or show any discomfort, which they sometimes do when 

 the water is too cold. 



The dairy cow is a good deal out of balance. When she was 

 in normal condition she found food and shelter for herself and 

 had no difficulty in living and perpetuating her kind. When 

 man took her in hand he commenced to unbalance her. He took 

 out in one place, and put in in another, until she has forgotten 

 how to do anything, except make milk out of the food she eats. 

 She cannot make flesh out of it and she hasn't native sense 

 enough left to save her life were she turned out to shift for her- 

 self during a New England winter. Once she was of Nature's 

 creation ; now she is man's. Man has worked her clay over 

 until he has made her the source of enormous quantities of the 

 m.ost luscious of human foods. He has spun his thread fine ; 

 so fine that she is like the touch of silk to the hand ; so fine 

 that she accepts man — her master — as her adopted son and 

 yields to him that measure of her own life that Nature intended 

 for the nourishment of her calf ; so fine that her sons are unbal- 

 anced like her — bunches of nerves — more the work of art, than 

 of Nature. 



As races of men become wiser and weaker, so, as our animals 

 have become wiser in the exercise of one function, they have 

 become weaker in others. 



City people recognize the lack of Nature in their methods of 

 living and so teach physical culture to the younger children ; 

 the girls play basketball and tennis, the boys, baseball and ioot- 

 ball — and other people take golf as substitutes for the tasks 

 which Nature imposed, when she required everv creature to 

 hunt for his own food and supply his own shelter. Each year, 

 men pnd women leave their unnatural lives in cities and go 

 out into the open world, where their fathers and mothers got 

 their strength and vitality, hoping to store up enough of Nature, 



