f the countenance
in moments of blissful emotion or exaltation. No doubt the effect is
produced by the eyes, which are the mirrors of the mind, and as they are
turned full upon us they produce an illusion, seeming to make the whole
face shine.

In our talk I told him of long rambles on the Mendips, along the valley
of the Somerset Axe, where I had lately been, and where of all places,
in this island, the cow should be most esteemed and loved by man. 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.

He replied that cows of that temper were not unknown in South Devon.
Very proudly he pointed to one of the small herd that followed us as
an example. In most cases, he said, the calf was left from two or three
days to a week, or longer, with the mother to get strong, and then taken
away. This plan could not be always followed; some cows were s