522 HISTORY OF 



to graze on a high rich pasture. This animal seems but little 

 regardful of the quality of its food, provided it be supplied in 

 sufficient abundance ; it makes no particular distinction in the 

 choice of its herbage, but indiscriminately and hastily devours 

 the proper quantity. For this reason, in our pastures, where 

 the grass is rather high than succulent, more flourishing than 

 nutritious, the cow thrives admirably ; and there is no part of 

 Europe where the tame animal grows larger, yields more milk, 

 or more readily fattens, than with us. 



Our pastures supply them with abundance, and they in return 

 enrich the pasture ; for, of all animals, the cow seems to give 

 back more than it takes from the soil. The horse and the sheep 

 are known, in a course of years, to impoverish the ground. 

 The land where they liave fed becomes weedy, and the vegeta- 

 bles coarse and unpalatable ; on the contrary, the pasture where 

 the cow has been bred, acquires a finer, softer surface, and be- 

 comes everj' year more beautiful and even. The reason is, that 

 the horse being furnished with fore-teeth in the upper jaw, nips 

 the grass closely, and therefore only chooses that which is the 

 most delicate and tender; the sheep also, though, with respect 

 to its teeth, formed like the cow, only bites the most succulent 

 parts of the herbage : these animals, therefore, leave all the high 

 weeds standing ; and while they cut the finer grass too closely, 

 suffer the ranker herbage to vegetate and overrun the pasture. 

 But it is otherwise with the cow : as its teeth cannot come so 

 close to the ground as those of the horse, nor so readily as those 

 of the sheep, which are less, it is obliged to feed upon the tallest 

 vegetables that offer •, thus it eats them all down, and in time, 

 levels the surface of the pasture. 



The age of the cow is known by the teeth and horns. This 

 animal is furnished with eight cutting teeth in the lower jaw ; 

 at the age of ten months the two middlemost of these fall out, 

 and are replaced by others that are not so white, but broader; 

 at the age of sixteen months the two next milk-white teeth fall 

 out likewise, and others come up in their room ; thus, at the 

 end of every six months, the creature loses and gains, till at the 

 age of three years all the cutting-teeth are renewed, and then 

 they are long, pretty white, and equal ; but in proportion as the 

 animal advances in years, they become irregular and black, their 

 inequalities become smoother, and the animal less capable of 



