fourth or fifth month in calf.

The FOURTH class is composed of _bad cows_. As they are commonly in
good condition, these cows are often the most beautiful of the herd and
in the markets. They have fleshy thighs, thick and hard skin, a large
and coarse neck and head, and horns large at the base.

The udder is hard, small and fleshy, with a skin covered with long,
rough hair. No veins are to be seen either on the perineum or the udder,
while those of the belly are slightly developed, and the mirrors are
ordinarily small, as in cut L.

With these characteristics, cows give only a few quarts of milk a day,
and dry up in a short time after calving. Some of them can scarcely
nourish their calves, even when they are properly cared for and well
fed.

Sickly habits, chronic affections of the digestive organs, the chest,
the womb, and the lacteal system, sometimes greatly affect the milk
secretion, and cause cows troubled with them to fall from the first or
second to the third, and sometimes to the fourth class.

Without pushing this method of judging of the good milking qualities of
cows into the objectionable extreme to which it was carried by its
originator, it may be safely asserted that the milk-mirror forms an
important additional mark or point for distinguishing good milkers; and
it may be laid down as a rule that, in the selection of milch cows, as
well as in the choice of young animals for breeders, the milk-mirror
should, by all means, be examined and considered; but that we should not
limit or confine ourselves exclusively to it, and that other and
long-known marks should be equally regarded.

There are cases, however, where a knowledge and careful examination of
the form and size of the mirror become of the highest importance. It is
well known that certain signs or marks of great milkers are developed,
only as the capacities of the animal herself are fully and completely
developed by age. The milk-veins, for instance, are never so large and
prominent in heifers and young cows as in old ones, and the same may be
said of the udder, and of the veins of the udder and perineum; all of
which it is of great importance to observe in the selection of milch
cows. Those signs, then, which in cows arrived at maturity are almost
sufficient in themselves to warrant a conclusion as to their merits as
milkers, are, to a great extent, wanting in younger animals, and
altogether in calves, as to which there is often doubt wheth