DOMESTIC ANIMALS IN INDIA. 



601 



The beauty of the cow counts almost as much as her useful- 

 ness in popular estimation, and the best breeds are really hand- 

 some. It is true that a British amateur, accustomed to the level 

 back of the English beast, at first looks unfavorably on the hump 

 and the falling hind quarter. The head seems too large and the 

 body too short. But he acknowledges at once the clean, thorough- 

 bred legs, the fine expression of the eye, the air of breeding in 

 the broad, convex brow and slender muzzle, the character given 

 by the deep, thin dewlap, the smooth, mole-like skin, and in the 

 large breeds an indefinable majesty of mien. In addition to their 

 high caste and shapely look, the hind legs are much straighter 

 and less " cow-hocked " than those of the English animal, and 

 are not swung so far out in trotting. On occasion the animal can 

 jump a fence with a carriage of limbs like that of the horse. So 



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The wheat 

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Fig. 5. — In a Good Season. 



in a very short time the Briton drops his prejudices, and is even 

 reconciled to the hump, which, like that of the camel and the fat 

 tail of the dumha sheep, has some mysterious relation to the vary- 

 ing conditions of a precarious food-supply. They say vaguely it 

 is a reserve of sustenance, but it would take a physiologist to 

 explain how it acts. Some insist that the sloping quarter is the 

 result of ages of scanty or irregular feeding, but it is now, at all 

 events, a fixed anatomical peculiarity. 



