THE SIMILITUDE OP THE COW 29 



can find time for solid comfort and contemplation, 

 the cow regurgitates the food and each bolus or 

 "cud^' is thoroughly rechewed and ground, several 

 hours of each day being given up to this (for her) 

 very pleasant task. Each "cud" is commonly given 

 from fifty to seventy strokes of the teeth before it is 

 swallowed and replaced by a new portion. Calves 

 chew more rapidly than older animals. The cow 

 that is seriously sick ceases to ruminate and if she 

 again "finds her cud" it is joyfully hailed by her 

 owner as an evidence of returning health. An in- 

 teresting comment on how late ignorance and su- 

 perstition linger among us is the fact that a genera- 

 tion ago many cow-keepers believed that the cud 

 was a definite something — a sort of personal pos- 

 session belonging to a cow and that if she was so 

 unfortunate as to "lose" it she must have some spe- 

 cial help to replace it. Many weird combinations — 

 a hunk of fat, salt pork being one of the most ap- 

 proved — ^were forced down the throat of sick cows 

 in a well meant effort to supply this particular 

 need. Not only "loss of cud" but "wolf-in-the-tail" 

 and "hoUow-hom" were classic ailments of the old- 

 time quack cow doctor. For "hollow-horn" he 

 bored a hole in the horn with a gimlet and poured 

 in turpentine. If the miserable cow died, he cut 

 off her horn for the satisfaction of the owner and, 

 lo, it was hollow! an incontestible proof of the 

 correctness of his diagnosis. This may sound like 

 fanciful invention or a tale of the Dark Ages, but 



