Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1871 — The Cow’s Intelligence. [ARTICLE]

The Cow’s Intelligence.

The editor of the Milk Journal gives the following instance of intelligent cows: That cows have ;memory, language, signs, and the means of enjoying pleasant asrociation, or combining for aggressive purposes, but scarcely to the extent the subject merits. Traveling in Italy many yt ars ago, we visited some of the large dairy farms in the neighborhood of Ferrara. Interspersed amongst much lowlyipg, unhealthy land, remarkable for the prevalence on it of very fatal forms of anthrax in the' summer season, are fine undulating pasture lands, and the fields are of great extent. We happened to stop at a farm house one fine , autumn afternoon when the cows were about to be milked. A herd of oyer one hundred was grazing homewards. The women took

their positions with stool and pail close to the house, and as the cows approached names were called out which at flrat we thought addressed to the milk maids. Rosa, Giulia,Sposa, and many names which were noted .by u» at the lime, were called out by the overseer or one of the women, and we were astonished to see cow after Cow cease feeding or chewing the ciidAnd make direct, sometimes at a trot, for the women that usually milked her. The practice, we found was not confined to one farm ,- all the cows on each farm knew thejf respective names, and took up lhair position hi the oja-n just as readily as the individual members of some large herds in tiffs country turning from .the fields take up their places in the sheila