126 BIRDS AND POETS 
finding this ruse does not succeed, it mounts to its 
feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desper- 
ately upon the intruder. But it recovers from 
this wild scare in a little while, and never shows 
signs of it again. 
The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, 
looks to me like a vestige of her former wild in- 
stincts, —the instinct to remove everything that 
would give the wild beasts a clew or a scent, and so 
attract them to her helpless young. 
How wise and sagacious the cows become that 
run upon the street, or pick their living along the 
highway! The mystery of gates and bars is at las* 
solved to them. They ponder over them by night. 
they lurk about them by day, till they acquire a new 
sense, — till they become en rapport with them and 
know when they are open and unguarded. Th 
garden gate, if it open into the highway at an} 
point, is never out of the mind of these roadsters, 
or out of their calculations. They calculate upor 
the chances of its being left open a certain numbei 
of times in the season; and if it be but once, and 
only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corr 
suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has 
not been awakened at night by the squeaking ana 
crunching of those piratical jaws under the window, 
or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have 
had the cows, after they had eaten up my garden, 
break into the stable where my own milcher was 
tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life 
presents but one absorbing problem to the street 
