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38 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



THE COW AND PURE MILK. 



By Jas. a. Gamble, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



History gives little (authentic) information about the very 

 early life of man. It seems certain, however, that his domain 

 was the earth, and that the earth was inhabited by other wild 

 creatures, some of which, no doubt, relentlessly sought to take 

 his life, for he was by nature the most defenceless of them all. 

 Very pressing was his need to husband and increase as soon as 

 possible his resources. Among the creatures around him he 

 found those which subsisted on grass and tender shoots as well 

 as the fierce hunters of flesh that preyed upon one another. 



Man, even in those early days, was averse to work, and he 

 soon observed that some of the grass-eating animals were en- 

 dowed by nature with that upon which their oftspring seemed 

 to thrive. I strongly believe that the calf was the first dairy- 

 man, and an object of interesting observation to the human 

 creature, looking for that with which to satisfy his ever-return- 

 ing hunger. Man had not then discovered fire and so subsisted 

 on whatever came to hand in the raw state. 



While the number of animals with which his nature would 

 permit intimate association were few, he succeeded in time in 

 domesticating the cow. She in turn gave him food, drink, and 

 the wherewithal to keep himself warm. With these companions 

 he whiled away the early centuries, and they became the first 

 riches of mankind. He found them when a savage, and in the 

 routine of caring for them the way was opened for his transition 

 into the arts which made him civilized. So great did his depend- 

 ence on this animal become that at length he came to worship 

 it and on many primitive altars erected by peoples who have 

 come and gone, we find the well-known figure of the genus Bos. 



