CONCEENING THE COW HEKSELF 11 



color, with brown or black ears; even today there 

 is an occasional reversion to the ancestral type. 

 Solid white is not an infrequent color among 

 Shorthorns, and a good many years ago on Hillside 

 Farm we came into possession of a rather elderly 

 cow of dubious quality and checkered ancestry. 

 She was even as the "milk-white bull" on which 

 Priscilla, bride of John Alden, rode on her wed- 

 ding day, but her ears were brown. I used to say 

 to myself and her: "Old cow, you are the heir of 

 all the ages. Your ancestral story goes back and 

 links with the days when Abraham drove forth 

 his herds from Ur of the Chaldees and Job's sheep 

 lay sick in the land of Uz, and drowsing shepherds 

 watched their flocks beneath the stars on the plains 

 of Shinar. In you there may be the blood of fa- 

 mous Shorthorn sires and the blood of dairy 

 queens. It may be a thousand generations ago some 

 far-off savage men had first dominion over you. 

 Your characters have been buried beneath the accu- 

 mulated mass piled up by many masters and chang- 

 ing environment, yet once again, like the geologic 

 outcrop of buried strata, that long forgotten color 

 of the wild ox has reappeared in you." 



This white cow with her brown ears was a truly 

 remarkable example of color reversion such as 

 would not appear once in many thousand times, 

 but many cattle show dark patches inside the ears 

 which may fairly be regarded as a tendency to hark 

 back to primitive coloring. We forget, perhaps, 



