HABITS AND HAIR OF UNGULATES 89 



shoulders, and here a whorl is found. From this point the stream 

 returns to its ancient and normal course and so passes to the tail. 

 When the base of the tail is reached a very significant and apparently 

 whimsical arrangement of the hair down the centre of the tail is 

 observed. This consists in a line of stiff hairs which stand up at 

 right angles to the surface of the tail, and it gradually passes into 

 the normal again when the more muscular part of the tail is passed. 

 I should add here that the crest and reversed hair on the back are 

 common to many wild ungulates of this ruminant group, and a 

 good example of it is seen in an antelope, Oryx Beisa, which I 

 figured and described in a paper at the Zoological Society of 

 London. 



Arrangements of its hair so audacious as these need explanation, 

 and it is found in the mode of life of the cow. So large a part of 

 its daily life is spent in the business of grazing with her muzzle 

 close to the ground, during which the neck of the animal is constantly 

 stretched downwards from the back at the level of the shoulders, 

 that the skin, which is very loose in this and most other portions 

 of its body, is dragged upon to allow of the extreme flexion of its 

 neck. This traction is for all this time acting against the normal 

 or backward slope of the hairs, and has given rise to this victory 

 of a new force through a thousand generations. It is equally 

 clear that a mechanical explanation of the line of erect hairs on the 

 first nine or twelve inches of the tail is forthcoming, for one has only 

 to watch a cow standing on a hot day, undergoing her torment 

 of flies, to see it writ large. Very strong little muscles are found 

 at the base of the tail, those along the more free portion becoming 

 smaller and smaller until they disappear towards the tip. These 

 give a powerful flicking action to the long heavy tail and I once 

 made some observations as to this on a number of cows which 

 were grazing in summer on a comparatively cool wind-swept hillside 

 in the western end of the Isle of Wight. I watched several cows 

 on different occasions and found that one would flick her tail 348 

 times and another 1082 times per hour. Giving these cows an 

 eight hours' working day, " working " for their living in grazing 

 and ruminating by turns, one gains a vivid idea of the number of 

 times per diem these powerful muscles of the tail contract. If we 

 call it a day of four hours of grazing and four of ruminating, for 

 the sake of argument, we get 1392 to 4328 flicks of the tail each day 

 in the time of flies, leaving out of account the casual flicks in which 

 she would indulge when flies were not tormenting her. It is hardly 

 necessary to point out how the underlying muscles would drag 

 upon the skin of the tail over them and gradually reverse more or 



