EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 591 



it is manipulating tlie mammary glands of a refractory female bovine by 

 the light of the pale moon or a vile smelling lantern under the conditions 

 that used to prevail in this section. 



Entering into the proposition in the first place was the cow of uncertain 

 lineage who gave at best but a portion of the mess required today. This 

 creature, whose breeding was mainly just "cow," was not exactly a thing 

 of beauty and a joy forever in all ways, but she got there just the same 

 in many and was really the general purpose cow in the widest sense, for 

 did she not provide us both beef and milk for our inner man, leather and 

 tallow to shoe us and lighten our ways; but also was she not the mother 

 of the ox whose very name furnished our early pedagogues such an 

 excellent word with which to start us on the sea of knowledge? I 

 believe that the word cat is used since oxen have gone out of fashion. 

 And what could we have done without that self-same ox wherewith to 

 scratch these wide, expansive prairies of Iowa and tickle the face of 

 Mother Earth until she laughed with ever-Increasing bountiful harvests 

 and got into the Iowa habit of bumper crops that are renowned the 

 world over? All honor to the cow of our daddies; she was a diligent, 

 faithful, dear old creature in many ways, and filled her place nobly, 

 raising descendants who have in many instances been worthy of their 

 breeding, lining their owners' pockets while helping to lift mortgages, 

 clothe children, enlarge farms, pay preachers and provide for old age 

 and dependent relatives. 



A glance back down the vista of vanished years, searching for past 

 experiences that will guide us in our search for the ideal cow of the future, 

 reveals the fact that conditions have changed so that we must of necessity 

 have something different from the critter who very properly was the 

 mother of a sturdy race of work-oxen and furnished the table with cow 

 delicacies. With very little and poor shelter, ofttimes tethered to the lee 

 side of a threadbare haystack in winter and running at large in summer — 

 and when we say running you may take it literally, for didn't old Tige 

 or Rover, as the case may be, stimulate their lagging tendencies in the 

 Junetime of that summer long ago as they were driven up from the 

 woods or dogged out of the corn upon occasions when they had crawled 

 the wormiest kind of a worm fence? What would you expect such a 

 condition of things to produce in the way of a milk cow? A good one? 

 Not on your life. Imagine one of our placid demeanored cows of today, 

 with the generous milk veins and pendant udder, racing and tearing over 

 stumps and stones, across half-cleared patches, swimming creeks and 

 wallowing through mud to the merry tune of some savage biting cur who 

 was apt to deprive such as he was able to outrun of their sole defense 

 from the attacks of flies, gnats and mosquitoes, leaving only a stump 

 whose frequently resounding thwack on the cranium of her milker was 

 the only protest she was able to offer for such curtailing. Would such 

 treatment improve her disposition or milk-giving qualities, think you? 

 No! But in the past the creature that was able to withstand such 

 strenuous shocks served many and eflBcient purposes in the economy of 

 the community. But today conditions have changed and are so different, 

 land values are so much higher, range even in the extreme west is so 

 reduced and everything so specialized in all lines of business that to 



