No. 4.] COW AND THE MAN. 95 



times and places. In fact, it is altogether likely that this same 

 game is being played to-day. There are men who are being 

 deceived by cows and there are cows which arc being deceived 

 by men. When these two are mutually helpful to each other, 

 we have the best results. But we are getting ahead of our 

 story. Let us go back a short distance. 



Just why man select c<l a cow in preference to any other 

 animal, e.g., sheep, goat, mare, reindeer, — all of which are 

 used in some countries for milking purposes, — will doubtless 

 be a mystery always. There must have been some affinity be- 

 tween the wvAM and the cow. W^ith the right type of a man 

 and the right type of a cow we believe that this affinity exists 

 to-day. But there nuist have been some special reason for 

 man's selection of a cow for the great purpose of milk pro- 

 duction and the saving of the human race from utter extinc- 

 tion, as would undoubtedly have been the case before this had 

 not the cow come to the rescue of mankind. 



Variation the Pkobable Cause for Man's Choice of 



THE Cow. 

 We have no means of knowing for a certainty, but we be- 

 lieve the cause of man's selection of the dairy cow for pur- 

 poses of milk production lies in the fact that the cow possessed 

 in a marked degree the inherent quality of variation. By 

 instinct, or reasoning, or by some other means, man discovered 

 that the cow could be trained to produce a large quantity of 

 milk, — larger than any other animal known to man. It is 

 altogether likely that he tried his skill on the sheep, the goat 

 and on other animals, but the response was not sufficient to 

 warrant men in large numbers continuing experiments on an 

 animal so " sot " in its ways. The cow responded freely to 

 man's efforts at improvement. From an animal with jirobably 

 but two teats and a small udder she developed into an animal 

 with four, six and eight teats, and with an udder so large that 

 in some cases it is a burden to carry. At the same time the 

 quantity of milk given is astonishing. A Canadian auctioneer 

 at a sale of cows which we attended not long ago said that the 

 only reason the owner had for selling a particular cow^ was 



