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.