74 THE IDEAL AYRSHIRE. 



THE IDEAL AYRSHIRE. 



The ideal Ayrshire cow is an animal best designed 

 to fulfil the uses for which she is intended, and 

 which at the same time fills the eye as a thing of 

 beauty, completely in harmony between her shapes 

 and functions. Generations of honest endeavor to- 

 wards an ideal more or less perfect have developed her 

 into her present proportions. In her is united in a 

 completed whole all of those good points which are 

 recognized as indicating milk-giving quality, by all 

 dairymen the world over. The large digestive ca- 

 pacity, the economy of form and capacity of udder, 

 are her most striking features, indicating usefulness, 

 while these are united with a straightness of back, 

 with openness of vertebral joint and comeliness of 

 proportion, a brightness of eye, and that intelligence 

 of expression so attractive to the observer. She has 

 instincts ; she knows well her wants ; and her frame 

 and her body, her appearance and her functions, are 

 the happy equilibrium between the powers of nature 

 and the powers of art. 



To follow out the line of development of the Ayr- 

 shire cow, we must commence with the udder, for it 

 is here that the effort after productive power in the 

 milch cow quickly produced a tangible result. As an 

 obvious feature, this organ early showed its relation 



