The Cow
OUTLINES
-
No need to describe it.
-
Many kinds, especially in England.
-
Very useful because
-
(a) It gives milk,
-
(b) from which we make butter
-
(c) and cheese.
There is no need to say what the cow is like, for every child knows it. In the villages in India, it is often the children who look after the cows, for they are quite gentle animals; though the males, bulls, are often fierce and even dangerous. It is pleasant to see a herd of cows quietly feeding in the fields, or coming slowly home to the village in the evening to be milked.
There are many kinds of cows. The ordinary Indian cow is a small animal, with a hump on its neck. As a rule, it is not fed well, and so is thin and gives but little milk. In England, cows have been carefully bred for the last two hundred years, and many fine and large kinds have been produced. They are big handsome animals, and some give ten times as much milk as the ordinary Indian cow.
The cow is a very useful animal, chiefly because it gives us what is a perfect food, namely, milk. Milk is such good food that babies and young children live altogether on it, and grown-up people could not do without it. Of course, there are other animals that give milk, like the goat, the camel, the buffalo, and even the horse; and in some parts of the world, their milk is drunk. But except the buffalo milk, which is rich and good, the milk of these other animals is thin and sometimes bitter in taste.
From milk, we also make butter and cheese. Good butter is made from the rich cream which rises to the top when milk is allowed to stand. Butter is a portion of very good food and is the only form of fat which some people can eat. And cheese is wholesome and pleasant to the taste.
So from the cow, we get three kinds of wholesome and necessary food.
