THE BARN. 93 



They seem especially to relish the new leaflets on the 

 locusts and the rough foliage of the hackberry; but 

 they will not refuse a branch of maple, or of ash, or 

 even of wild cherry, though the boughs of the last, if 

 separate from the tree and the leaves withered, secrete 

 a poison which sometimes kills cattle, while there is 

 no harm in their feeding on the fresh live twigs. They 

 strip the vines of the Virginia creeper eagerly of their 

 whorls of young leaves, and do not mind a taste of the 

 poison three-leaf, or the new sprays of smilax and the 

 wild grape. They will eat certain kinds of weeds also, 

 and seem to like immensely to spice their grass with a 

 bunch or two of white top. And there they stand con- 

 tentedly chewing for a moment or two, with perhaps 

 a sprig of fresh leaves left caught upon their horns. 

 Cows, however, are very discriminating in the selection 

 of their food. It takes something good to satisfy a 

 cow. Sheep are not so particular, but will gladly de- 

 vour almost all kinds of weeds and grasses. It is inter- 

 esting to know that cows, in common with sheep and 

 all ruminants, have no front upper teeth, but only a 

 lower set, biting against a sort of plate of cartilage 

 above; and that they actually have four stomachs an 

 apparatus far ahead of man's, but quite necessary for 

 them, in order to take care of the chlorophyll, and so 

 eventually to get anything worth while out of all that 

 green stuff which they appropriate for themselves. 



I like to watch the cows in winter crunching the 

 succulent, fragrant millet, or feeding upon clover hay, 

 or eating their corn fodder. Sometimes snow gets 

 mingled with it from the stacks. But how they love 

 it! How they toss it, and put their noses down into 



