Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

you see those are doing. called chewing the cud.

This is

See! that black one near to the gate raises her head, and seems to be getting upon her feet. Now another rises, and another, and another! they all look the same way, and move gently towards something which is coming through the gate. We shall soon be able to make out clearly what this is.

Can you tell now?

Yes. It is a boy, with a milk pail on his head, and a stool in one hand, and a second milk pail in the other. The cows know that he has come to take their milk from them, and they go to meet him. He is calling that pretty little brown one, and all the others will wait quietly, each one till her turn comes.

In a country called Switz-er-land, there are a great many mountains; and flat fields like that at which we are looking are very few and very small. As soon as all the grass in the fields is gone, the cows go up these very high

hills, to find more food, and there is always one cow who is looked upon as the leader. She leads the way up every June, and comes back at their head in October. Their master goes up with them. He builds a small wooden house in the mountains, and lives in it as long as the cows stay there.

His children put fresh wreaths of flowers round the leader's horns every year, when she starts for the mountains. You should see her walking in front of the herd!-we call a number of cows together, a herd, just as we call a number of sheep together, a flock-she tosses up her head, and walks proudly, as if she were saying, "Look at me! "see how smart I am! That is because "I guide the others to the places where "the best and longest grass is to be 66 found, and I take care not to lead "them into narrow broken places on "the steep part of the mountain, where "there would not be room for them to "walk safely."

One of these cows which had been at the head of the herd for a great

many years, and was getting oldso that she could not walk so proudly, nor see so well, as before, was put aside to make room for a younger, and grander looking, cow. When she saw the new leader decked with flowers as she had been the year before, she rushed forward and attacked the new favourite; she fought fiercely, and for a long time would not believe that she was beaten. Poor thing! at last she was obliged to give way. She went home,-refused to eat,-and pined away by degrees-and died.

[blocks in formation]

THE COW.-PART II.

I SUPPOSE no one can say: "I could do very well without the cow!"

The little girl who sits on the stool

by the fire in the morning with her basin of bread and milk in her lap, waiting till this nice breakfast is a little cooler, cannot say so.

on

Her two big brothers who are standing by the table, watching their mother cut those thick slices of bread, which she means to spread some butter, cannot say so.

And the tall man who sits under the tree, eating his cheese with his bread, cannot say so, I am sure.

You saw the milk taken from the cow, and I know that the boy took it to the dairy. The dairy-maid poured some of it into flat round pans, and left it in them all night for the cream to rise to the top. She skimmed off this cream, and put it into a churn, to make butter. The rest of the milk she poured into a very large deep pan. She will make cheese from it presently.

Your father's thick boots are made of cow's skin. When you saw the bricklayer mixing his mortar as passed by that new house, I wonder whether you knew that all the hair in

we

that old box was scraped off the cow's skin before the skin was made into leather?

But we have said nothing about those fine horns. The young of the cow, which is called a calf, has no horns. It must wait till it grows older; then the horns will come. Horns are of great use to the cow if she should be attacked. She can always defend herself and her young with them, but the calves would perhaps only be quarrelsome and fight each other if they had them.

The horns are useful to us too. Combs, and sometimes drinking cups, are made of them, and I have seen lanterns in which pieces of horn cut very thin were put instead of small panes of glass.

I have heard some pretty tunes played on a cow's horn. In some places where the lanes are very narrow and winding, so that two carts cannot pass in them, every carter carries a cow's horn slung round his neck, and he blows a loud blast upon it, that any

« ПредишнаНапред »