THE SPIRIT OF THE HERD 127 



or of a meeker mien than the cow. She is never 

 abject like the donkey; but centuries of gentling 

 and giving down have made her cowlike, until 

 she is in danger of forever losing her horns. She 

 is not in any danger of forgetting how to use 

 horns, however. More than once have I been 

 chased in the evening by the cow I had driven 

 peacefully to pasture in the morning. On one 

 occasion I narrowly escaped with my life from 

 the kindest of old cows, one which I had been 

 driving to the meadows all summer. Her new- 

 born calf was the trouble. She had hidden it 

 among the mallows, stationed herself near by 

 and waited for me, as a thousand years before 

 she had waited for the wolf or the bear. Her 

 swift and unexpected lunge was the very fury 

 of wildness. 



Little as domestication has changed the indi- 

 vidual animal, it has changed still less the animal 

 group — the herd, the flock, the pack. The spirit 

 of the pack and herd spring from deep and primal 

 needs — common fear, or hunger, or the call of 

 kind to kind. The gregarious animal must be 

 separated from its clan to be domesticated. Al- 

 lowed to return to the herd or pack, it lapses 



