or for some other secluded spot.  After the calf is several hours old, and has got upon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign commands it to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed.  If the calf is approached at such time, it plays “possum,” pretends to be dead or asleep, till, on finding this ruse does not succeed, it mounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately upon the intruder.  But it recovers from this wild scare in a little while, and never shows signs of it again.

The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to me like a vestige of her former wild instincts,—­the instinct to remove everything that would give the wild beasts a clew or a scent, and so attract them to her helpless young.

How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, or pick their living along the highway!  The mystery of gates and bars is at last solved to them.  They ponder over them by night, they lurk about them by day, till they acquire a new sense,—­till they become en rapport with them and know when they are open and unguarded.  The garden gate, if it open into the highway at any point, is never out of the mind of these roadsters, or out of their calculations.  They calculate upon the chances of its being left open a certain number of times in the season; and if it be but once, and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn suffer.  What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the window, or in the direction of the vegetable patch?  I have had the cows, after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal.  Yes, life presents but one absorbing problem to the street cow, and that is how to get into your garden.  She catches glimpses of it over the fence or through the pickets, and her imagination or her epigastrium is inflamed.  When the spot is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her peeping at the cabbages through a knothole.  At last she learns to open the gate.  It is a great triumph of bovine wit.  She does it with her horn or her nose, or may be with her ever-ready tongue.  I doubt if she has ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough.

A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city.  I more than half suspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched.  Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo.  On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse.  I then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again.  After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate.  She lifted the latch with her nose.  Then, as the gate did not move,