324 Next to the Ground 



or gay red-and-white blotched, was long- 

 horned, short-horned, even entirely hornless. 

 Young calves have no horns. The horns 

 come through between two and three months 

 old. Muley calves — properly, polled or 

 hornless ones — could be told from the first 

 by the high bunchy crest of long hair stand- 

 ing up pertly between the ears. The scrub 

 stock was the same, of course with many 

 dilutions, and much intermingling, the pioneer 

 Baker had driven over the mountains into 

 Tennessee. In proof now and again, a red 

 cow, or a white one, or a blotchy brindle, or 

 a white-faced black, dropped a calf with a 

 pure dun coat, like the dun ever-so-many- 

 times great grandmothers which had come 

 out of Carolina. 



Cows do not forget their big children in 

 the delight of loving and licking their little 

 ones. Even after the big ones have calves 

 of their own, the milky mothers moo recog- 

 nition and lick the daughters all over. That 

 is however a service any cow will perform 

 for a herd-comrade with whom she keeps 

 terms of amity and comity. Considering 

 how blockily a cow is built she has a won- 

 derful facility in reaching all over herself with 

 her tongue, her tail, or her hoofs. She 

 scratches herself back of the ears and under the 

 jaws, with deft motions of her hind hoofs. 



