COW-PASTUEBS AND COW-PATHS 57 



In these short migrations it will be noted that 

 certain individuals are nearly always at the front, 

 while others quite as surely trail along behind. 

 When thus "going somewhere" they are fond of 

 walking single file as their well-defined, hard- 

 beaten, and often somewhat sunken cow-paths 

 attest. 



As commonplace a thing as a cow-path, by the 

 way, is really a record worth study and musing. 

 The same path is followed year after year, and if 

 obliterated by plowing and later the field is again 

 returned to pasture, it will be reestablished fol- 

 lowing almost exactly the same course. The ex- 

 planation is simply that the cow is a past-master 

 in the engineering art of choosing the easiest grade 

 between two points. Emphatically she ddes not go 

 over a knoll, she goes around, and one can only 

 wish that the pioneers who were responsible for 

 the roads through our hill country might have had 

 just a little of this good cow sense. The cow does 

 not stick to paths when in a hurry or urged on by 

 a driver, but they make use of them when on their 

 leisurely journeys. Sheep, by the way, have this 

 same habit of wandering in beaten trails. I do not 

 know that the most enthusiastic lover of the cow 

 will contend that she is remarkable for her in- 

 telligence. She has neither the spirit and courage 

 of the horse nor the love of mankind that marks the; 

 dog, nor the devotion to locality as distinguished 

 from attachment to persons that distinguishes the 



