Yet Even There, Where, Standing On
Some Elevation, Cows Beyond One's Power To Number Could Be
Seen Scattered Far And Wide In The Green Vales Beneath, It Had
Saddened Me To Find Them So Silent.
It is not natural for
them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty voices
- the cattle on a thousand hills.
Their morning and evening
lowing is more to me than any other natural sound - the melody
of birds, the springs and dying gales of the pines, the wash
of waves on the long shingled beach. The hills and valleys of
that pastoral country flowing with milk and honey should be
vocal with it, echoing and re-echoing the long call made
musical by distance. The cattle are comparatively silent in
that beautiful district, and indeed everywhere in England,
because men have made them so. They have, when deprived of
their calves, no motive for the exercise of their voices. For
two or three days after their new-born calves have been taken
from them they call loudly and incessantly, day and night,
like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be
comforted; grief and anxiety inspires that cry - they grow
hoarse with crying; it is a powerful, harsh, discordant sound,
unlike the long musical call of the cow that has a calf, and
remembering it, and leaving the pasture, goes lowing to give
it suck.
I also told him of the cows of a distant country where I had
lived, that had the maternal instinct so strong that they
refused to yield their milk when deprived of their young.
They "held it back," as the saying is, and were in a sullen
rage, and in a few days their fountains dried up, and there
was no more milk until calving-time came round once more.
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