682 The American Naturalist. [August, 
ancestry, and, excepting here and there a man strangely awakened 
to the comfort and safety of his cattle, no one thought of collect- 
ing a herd of them. The term ' muUey ' was an epithet to imply 
low rank in cow circles. In the village where I w^as born, the 
mention of Jake Thompson's or Joe Brown's old mulley cow 
brought to mind a neighbor who was generally out of work, and 
always out at the elbows, who hunted a little in winter, fished 
some in spring time, worked a few days at double wages for the 
farmers in harvest, and completed his efforts at earning a living 
by digging snake-root and ginseng from the forests around, which 
he exchanged at the general store for whiskey and tobacco, 
necessaries in the households of Messrs. Thompson and Brown. 
This for a routine picture of the owner of the cow ; and, as I 
recall her outline, I remember a cat-hammed beast, with a big 
udder, ewe neck, small shoulders, poor in flesh and shag in coat, 
who lived by stealth as her owner lived in idleness. Among the 
bovine aristocrats of the thriving farmers near around, the mulley 
cow had no welcome, and if she ever came by unlooked-for birth 
or unsought purchase, she was either sold to Thompson and 
Brown, aforesaid, or sent to the butcher. And yet for the 
children of Thompson and Brown she was both bread and meat, 
as all the grown-up T.'s and B.'s will affirm. 
" Those patient old polls ! It was a wonder with me that they 
continued to be born at all after so many years of neglect, if not 
outright extermination. Looking around for a reason for their 
continued existence, it was found in their intrinsic worth. So 
soon as there was talk among the neighbors of the advantages of 
hornless cattle as herders, feeders and shippers, it was a gratifica- 
tion to learn that every man spoken to had kind words for some 
old, uncrowned bossy of memory ; the villagers, Thompson and 
Brown, found them large producers of milk, great foragers, and 
hence the best poor man's cow in all the land. Lack of food 
and housing care did not give them rounded forms ; generations 
of cruel neglect robbed them of ancestral beauty, and they were 
only permitted to survive for the fittest of all reasons — they 
were u.seful. Nearly every farmer, it was found, had fond recol- 
lections and kind words for some old smooth-pated cow, recalling 
