

THE FLOCKS AND HERDS 113 



cious of all our servants. The truth seems to be that the 

 bovine animals have but little intellectual capacity, and it has 

 in no wise served the purposes of man to develop such powers 

 of mind as they have. We have ever been given to asking 

 little of them, save docility. This we have in a high measure 

 won with our milch cows, which of all our domesticated creat- 

 ures are perhaps the most absolutely submissive ; the more 

 highly developed of them being little more than passive pro- 

 ducers of milk, almost without a trace of instincts or emotions 

 except such as pertain to reproduction and to feeding. It is 

 a noteworthy fact that in all the great literature of anecdote 

 concerning our domesticated animals, there is hardly a trace 

 of stories which tend to show the existence of sagacity in our 

 common cattle. 



It is evident that the variability of our domesticated 

 bovines, as far as their bodies are concerned, is very great. 

 Between the ancient aurochs and the more highly cultivated 

 of its descendants, the difference is as great as that which 

 separates any other of our captive animals from their wild 

 ancestors. In size, shape, in flesh- and milk-giving qualities, 

 the departure from the old form of the wilderness is remark- 

 able. Moreover, at the present time these diverse breeds of 

 horned cattle are rapidly being multiplied, the distinctive 

 forms probably being twice as numerous as they were at the 

 beginning of the present century. The process of selection 

 has led to some very wide diversifications of the body. The 

 horns, which in the wild state are invariably well developed, 

 and which in the cattle of our Western plains attain very great 

 size, have in certain breeds altogether disappeared, and' in 

 their place there sometimes comes a remarkable crest of 

 bony matter which does not project beyond the skin which 



