COWS THE COW is one of the most docile and useful of all domestic animals. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that she is the most useful of all animals, not excepting the horse. A brief recital of some of the ways in which the cow is serviceable to man will be sufficient to demonstrate this. She supplies us with milk, cream, butter, cheese, meat, tallow, leather, glue, horn for combs, bones for knife-handles and chalk, hair for holding plaster together, and many other things we need not stop here to mention. It has been well said that no part of the cow is wasted; all is of value. She has been fittingly described as the gentle and faithful nurse of both men and children. In some countries oxen are still used extensively for tilling the soil and hauling timber and heavy loads to market. Only a few years ago it was reported that there were more than 25,000 oxen used in drayage work in the city of Bombay, India, alone. In earlier times many American pioneers moved out West with an ox-team, and thousands of acres of Western prairie land have been broken up by yokes of these faithful animals. There are various breeds of cattle, such as the Devons, Hereford, Durham, Holstein, Alderney, and Jersey, varying somewhat in color, size, and appearance. Some are excellent for giving large quantities of milk, others for giving very rich milk, and still others as meat-producers; but all have the same general characteristics, and are of great value and service to man. They are too common and too well known to require extended description here. The following stories present a few interesting narratives of this serviceable and valuable animal. A COW'S MOTHER LOVE Cows have as much love for their young as have other animals. It is pitiful to hear them mooing when deprived of their calves. A cow had her calf taken from her and left at her home at Bushy Park, England, while she was driven off to be sold at Smithfield, the great market-place of London. The following morning when it was supposed the cow was in London, she appeared at the gate of the yard in which her calf was confined. Impelled by her love for her offspring, she had broken out of the pen, passed through all the streets of the suburbs without being stopped by the police, who naturally supposed, from her quiet manner, that the drover must be not far away, and once in the country, had quickly traveled the twelve miles that took her to her former home. It is probable that she took the same road back to Bushy which she had traveled when being driven to Smithfield. What obstacles true love overcomes! If the poor dull cow could feel and manifest such love for her offspring as to overcome such difficulties, what must be the love and anxiety of a human mother toward her children! Can you, then, ever carelessly wound your mother's feelings by your misconduct? THE RUNAWAY OX-TEAM ONE of the relics of Western pioneer life was an old ox-yoke. A boy about ten years old espied one of these relics one day lying on a beam overhead in the barn on the old homestead of his grandfather, where he was then living. He thought it would be fine sport to take this yoke and yoke up a pair of yearling steers from his father's herd of cattle, and, with a rope tied to the iron ring in the middle of the yoke, drive them about as he supposed his grandfather used to drive oxen in his day. |