WAYS OF NATURE 
T have known a cow to put her head between two 
trees in the woods — a kind of natural stanchion — 
and not have wit enough to get it out again, though 
she could have done so at once by lifting her head 
to a horizontal position. But the best instance I 
know of the grotesque ignorance of a cow is given by 
Hamerton in his “ Chapters on Animals.” The cow 
would not “give down” her milk unless she had her 
calf before her. But her calf had died, so the herds- 
man took the skin of the calf, stuffed it with hay, and 
stood it up before the inconsolable mother. Instantly 
she proceeded to lick it and to yield her milk. One 
day, in licking it, she ripped open the seams, and out 
rolled the hay. This the mother at once proceeded to 
eat, without any look of surprise or alarm. She liked 
hay herself, her acquaintance with it was of long 
standing, and what more natural to her than that 
her calf should turn out to be made of hay! Yet 
this very cow that did not know her calf from a bale 
of hay would have defended her young against the 
attack of a bear or a wolf in the most skillful and 
heroic manner; and the horse that was nearly fright- 
ened out of its skin by a white stone, or by the flutter 
of a piece of newspaper by the roadside, would find 
its way back home over a long stretch of country, or 
find its way to water in the desert, with a certainty 
you or I could not approach. 
The hen-hawk that the farm-boy finds so diffi- 
cult to approach with his gun will yet alight upon 
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