164: NEIGHBORS WITH CLA WS AND HOOFS. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

 OUR FARM-YARD MILK-GIVERS. 



" In the furrowed land 

 The toilsome and patient oxen stand ; 

 Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, 

 With their dilated nostrils spread, 

 They silently inhale 

 The clover-scented gale, 

 And the vapors that arise 

 From the well-watered and smoking soil. 

 For this rest in the furrow after toil 

 Their large and lustrous eyes 

 Seem to thank the Lord 

 More than man's spoken word." 



1. WE owe a debt of gratitude to the poets who, like 

 Longfellow in these graphic lines, have preserved to us 

 pictures of animal life now rapidly passing out of fact. 

 The time has been when the farm scene was incomplete 

 without the patient oxen laboring before their load, rest- 

 ing in the furrow, or reposing in the shade chewing their 

 comforting cud, and looking out of soft brown eyes. Now 

 the ox is scarcely to be seen, except as a grazer in the herd 

 or hanging in the butcher's stall. His place is supplied 

 by the horse, or by the long-eared, nimble-footed prosy 

 mule ; the cow remains. Her golden products still shine 

 on the farmer's table, and she sends her influence into 

 crowded cities in the form of mild, diluent, and harmless 

 fluid. 



2. To write the history of the ox or cow is to trace 

 the history of man. Who tirst caught and tamed the wild 

 beasts that were the original parents of our domestic cat- 

 tle we shall never know. Egyptians, Assyrians, Hebrews, 

 Greeks, Gauls, and Britons, all had cattle for the yoke 



