THE COW. 58v 



cultivation of the soil ; as supplying milk ; as furnishing meat ; and 

 lastly, as makers of manure or fertilizing matter. Allowing all this, the 

 question arises, is it possible to manage the breeding and rearing of the 

 Ox so as to ensure the maximum result of all these four requirements ? 

 All the agriculturists who have had any experience in breeding cattle 

 give a negative reply to this question. Qualities so different in their 

 nature as muscular vigor, abundance of milk, fitness for fattening, and 

 richness of fertilizing residuum, cannot, they say, be the attribute of one 

 animal, or one breed ; in fact, they exclude one another, and one quality 

 can only be encouraged at the expense ot the others. A good breed for 

 work can hardly at the same time be a good breed for the butcher. If 

 therefore, any one quality is to be specially developed, the others must, 

 to some extent, be sacrificed. By this plan perfection may, at all events, 

 be arrived at in one point, while by a different course of procedure 

 nothing but mediocrity can be attained. This is the principle which 

 ought to guide the agriculturist in the choice and breeding of his 

 cattle, whether for the dairy, the market, or the farm. 



For the butcher it is required to produce, as quickly and as econom- 

 ically as possible, an animal excelling in the quality and quantity of its 

 meat. Such are the short-horned breeds. Next to meat, milk is the 

 most valuable product, as it is not only universally consumed in its 

 natural state, but supplies us with cheese and butter. A French farmer, 

 named Guenon, professes to have discovered a method of determining, 

 by examination of the cow, both the quantity and the quality of its milk. 

 He remarked that in cows the hairs on the hinder face of the udders are 

 turned upward, and added to this, these hairs extend more or less over 

 the region of the perinreum, so as to form a figure which he describes 

 under the name of an escutcheon. By a multiplicity of observations, he 

 became assured that a cow's power of giving milk varied in proportion 

 to the size of this escutcheon, and he divided cows into orders and 

 classes accordingly. A commission appointed by the French govern- 

 ment made an investigation, and confirmed his hypothesis that, the 

 longer and wider the escutcheon is, the greater are the milking quali- 

 ties. As far as regards the richness of milk, Guenon considers that it 

 finds its maximum in those cows which have the skin of their udders of 

 a yellowish hue, freckled with black or reddish spots, furnished with fine 

 and scanty hair, and covered with a greasy substance, which become* 

 detached when it is scratched on the surface. 



