CHOICE AND TREATMENT OF THE COW. 41 



as it is said, lost any of her " quarters." * The milk veins 

 in connection with the udder should he prominent and large. 

 The head should he rather long and narrow, and the neck 

 rather thin than otherwise ; the extremities generally 

 should he fine. (3.) Among other characteristics of a 

 good dairy cow, quietness and docility of temperament is a 

 point of capital importance. A notice here, too, may he 

 given of what is regarded generally as a curious specula- 

 tion, rather than as having any certain foundation in ex- 

 perience. M. Guenon, of Bordeaux, has professed to he ahle 

 to determine the quantity of milk which a cow will yield, 

 and the numher of months during which she will maintain 

 that yield, hy an examination of certain local marks on the 

 thighs and hinder part of the animal. The notion is, that 

 cows are good milkers in proportion to the extent of 

 surface on the thigh, and backside generally, which is 

 covered hy reversed hair. The farther upwards, and the 

 wider there, that this surface of upward growing hair 

 extends, the hetter is the cow as a milker. An attempt 

 is made to connect this " escutcheon," as it is called, 

 surface with the arterial arrangements for the supply 

 of blood to the milk- secreting apparatus within the udder ; 

 hut M. Guenon's theory, such as it is, does, we believe, 

 depend simply upon the alleged observation of good milk- 

 ing qualities in animals which exhibit this peculiarity in 

 a remarkable degree. The late Mr. Haxton in his book, 



* This would really constitute a loss of one-quarter of her milk ; for the 

 udder is not a bag from which the teats are four common outlets for the 

 fluid it contains. Each of these outlets has connected with it a separate 

 apparatus for the secretion of milk ; so that, on the one hand, if one fail 

 or be diseased, wholesome nourishment for the young may still be obtained 

 from the others ; but so also on the other, that the loss of a teat is equal 

 to a real loss of one-fourth the milk-producing ability of the animal. 



