EEMARKS 



JLND 



OBSERVATIONS ON TEE COW 



AND 



THE DAIRY : 



INTRODUCTORY TO GUENON'S TREATISE 



ON MILCH COWS. 



THE cow AND THE DAIRY. 



Next to the horse, the COW is justly valued as the most useful animal which 

 man has been able to domesticate and retain permanently in his service. The 

 Ox tribe, of which it is the female, belongs to the order Ruminantia, in the class 

 Mammalia ; these terms implying that the animals runimate or chew their food 

 a second time, and have mammee or teats with which they suckle their young. — 

 In the Ox tribe there are different genera and species, all more or less differing 

 from each other. 



The Wild Breed, from being untamable, can only be kept within walls or good 

 fences ; consequently, very few of them are now to be met with, except in the 

 parks of some English gentlemen, who keep them for ornament and as a curiosity. 

 Their color is invariably of a creamy white ; muzzle black ; the whole of the in- 

 side of the ear, and about one-third of the outside from the tip downward, red ; 

 horn white, with black tips very fine, and bent upward ; some of the Bulls have 

 a thin upright mane, about four or five inches long. The weight of the Oxen is 

 from 450 to 550 lbs. and the Cows from 280 to 450 lbs. The beef is finely mar- 

 bled and of excellent flavor. 



Of the Domesticated Ox, the varieties from the effect of cultivattion are now 

 rery numerous. The Ox, in one or other of its genera, and for the sake of its la- 

 bor as a beast of draught, its flesh, or the milk of its female, has been domesti- 

 cated and carefully reared from the earliest times — in some countries having been 

 raised to the rank of a divinity, or, at least, held as an object of extreme venera- 

 tion. 



The domesticated species of Oxen is, in all its varieties, materially altered 

 from its wild parentage. Influenced hy climate, peculiar feeding, and training in 

 a state of subjection, its bony structure is diminished in bulk and power, its fero- 

 city tamed, and its tractability greatly improved. Our observations will refer 

 chiefly to the Cow, on which very great changes have been eflected by domesti- 

 cation : the most remarkable of these alterations has been in the capacity for giv- 

 ing milk. In a wild state, the udder is small, and shrinks into an insignificant com- 

 pass when the duty of suckling is over ; but when domesticated for the sake of 

 its milk, and that liquid is drawn copiously from it by artificial means, the lacte- 

 al or milk-secreting vessels enlarge, and the udder expands, so as to become a 

 prominent feature in the animal. In this manner, by constant exercise, the econ- 



