13 THE COW 



how almost infinitely long is the history of the do- 

 mestication of animals. Indeed, in the case of 

 cattle, so far as exact names and dates and opera- 

 tions are concerned, there is very little before the 

 great Thomas Bakewell and contemporary breeders 

 less than two centuries ago, but its beginnings go 

 back before our books and beyond tradition and 

 even beyond the days when were accumulated the 

 mounds of refuse in front of the cave-man's door. 



We are fond of dwelling on the great gulf that 

 separates our excellent dairy cow from her forest- 

 roaming ancestor, and it is all true, yet, after all, 

 the veneer of domestication — or shall we call it 

 civilization — ^is very thin. The cow, as also man, 

 is still an animal of many primitive impulses and 

 hereditary memories. So long as she is undis- 

 turbed, she seems very much a creature of habit. 

 As Isaiah long ago wrote, "The ass knoweth his 

 owner and the ox his master's crib." She stands 

 patiently at the pasture bars and answers the call 

 of her owner and does violence to all the instincts 

 of her motherhood by unresistingly offering her 

 udder to the hand of her milker, yet in time of 

 stress she seems very quickly to fall back into her 

 primitive wildness. 



I have repeatedly seen young heifers turned into 

 a back pasture for the summer who, owing to lack 

 of attention and contact with man, have "gone 

 wild" and in a few months have forgotten all the 



