io6 DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



BROWN BESS 



had a pasture, but she only used it as an exercise 

 ground and loafing place. When she really wanted 

 food she selected the garden patch which contained 

 the vegetables her highly cultivated appetite 

 craved. After appeasing her hunger she would re- 

 turn to her pasture lot and contentedly chew the 

 cud. 



Another cow possessing the same ingenuity, but 

 with less self-control, would have foundered in the 

 first red clover field, or miserably perished from 

 overloading her numerous stomachs with sugar 

 corn, or died in an agony of colic from the con- 

 sumption of too many green apples; but not so 

 with old Brown Bess! She grew plump and fat, 

 and her rotund sides appeared as if they had just 

 been brushed, combed and oiled for exhibition at 

 the county fair. 



I was curious to find out how she managed to 

 live so well, when all her companions were "ran- 

 gey" and lean, so one day I shadowed her. 



When I discovered her she was cropping the 

 grass by the roadside in company with three other 

 cows and a young bull. Bess gazed at me so in- 

 nocently with her big soft eyes that I was willing 

 to swear that she had been slandered by the en- 

 vious people who owned the thin cattle with moth- 

 eaten tails. After pausing, however, to exchange 

 greetings with her, scratch the cowlick on her fore- 

 head and pat her glossy sides, I stole away and 

 hid behind a tree. 



