REMARKS 



AND 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE COW 



AND 



THE DAIRY : 



INTRODUCTORY TO GUENON S TREATISE 



ON MILCH COWS. 



THE COW AND THE DAIRY. 



NEXT to the horse, the CO\V&quot; is justly valued as the most useful animal which 

 man has been able to domesticate and retain permanently in his service. The 

 Ox tribe, of which it is the female, belongs to the order Ruminantia, in the class 

 Mammalia ; these terms implying that the animals runimate or chew their food 

 a second time, and have mammae or teats with which they suckle their young. 

 In the Ox tribe there are different genera and species, all more or less differing 

 from each other. 



The Wild Breed, from being untamable, can only be kept within walls or good 

 fences ; consequently, very few of them are now to be met with, except in the 

 parks of some English gentlemen, who keep them for ornament and as a curiosity. 

 Their color is invariably of a creamy white ; muzzle black ; the whole of the in 

 side of the ear, and about one-third of the outside from the tip downward, red ; 

 horn white, with black tips very fine, and bent upward ; some of the Bulls have 

 a thin upright mane, about four or five inches long. The weight of the Oxen is 

 from 450 to 550 Ibs. and the Cows from 280 to 450 Ibs. The beef is finely mar 

 bled and of excellent flavor. 



Of the Domesticated Ox, the varieties from the effect of cultivation are now 

 very numerous. The Ox, in one or other of its genera, and for the sake of its la 

 bor as a beast of draught, its flesh, or the milk of its female, has been domesti 

 cated and carefully reared from the earliest times in some countries having been 

 raised to the rank of a divinity, or, at least, held as an object of extreme venera 

 tion. 



The domesticated species of Oxen is, in all its varieties, materially altered 

 from its wild parentage. Influenced by climate, peculiar feeding, and training in 

 a state of subjection, its bony structure is diminished in bulk and power, its fero 

 city tamed, and its tractability greatly improved. Our observations will refer 

 chiefly to the Cow, on which very great changes have been effected by domesti 

 cation : the most remarkable of these alterations has been in the capacity for giv 

 ing milk. In a wild state, the udder is small, and shrinks into an insignificant com 

 pass when the duty of suckling is over ; but when domesticated for the sake of 

 its milk, and that liquid is drawn copiously from it by artificial means, the lacte 

 al or milk-secreting vessels enlarge, and the udder expands, so as to become a 

 prominent feature in the animal. In this manner, by constant exercise, the econ- 



