James Wilson

“ When a red animal is mated with a white, their determinants meet, and the young, taking a half of that offered by each parent, starts off with a determinant, one half of which is for redness, the other half for whiteness, thus: ●○, and its coat is a mixture of red hairs and white—that is, roan. The proportions of the two kinds of hair vary greatly: the white hairs being sometimes so few that the roan is almost a red, and the red sometimes so few that it is almost a white. ”

“ When white cattle are mated with red, their progeny (first crosses) are roan; but when these roans are mated together, a quarter of their progeny return in colour to the white parent race and a quarter to the red parent race, while the remainder are roans again, like their parents. Mendel's theory explains such phenomena. He conceived the idea that an animal carries, from its very beginning, determinants which are going to decide, one its eventual colour, another its size, another its length of limb, and so on ”

“ But we shall better understand the process by which some of our modern breeds have been produced—the jumbling together, as it were, of different races and the emergence of new types of stock—after a short consideration of Mendel's theories, just as we should better understand how certain salts may be mixed together and new ones produced, by some knowledge of chemistry. ”

“ The point for us is that while there may be variation in the Darwinian sense, there are also sudden changes when animals of different characters are bred together, and under certain circumstances these changes are inherited. ”

“ Breeders preferred the hornlessness of the one breed and the redness of the other. The hornless character is dominant to the horned; consequently, as a result of crossing horned and hornless cattle, there were produced pure hornless cattle, masquerading hornless cattle, and horned cattle; but, by continually selecting hornless ones to breed from, the masqueraders and the horned ones were worked out. When the light dun Suffolks were crossed by red cattle, there resulted yellow intermediate hybrids; but when these were crossed by red cattle, half their progeny were red. ”

“ These black masqueraders cause confusion, since they cannot be separated from the pure black ones by the naked eye; but, like the intermediate roans, they may also be the means of transmitting a colour from one set of cattle to another. For instance, red cattle of North Devon type were taken to the south of Ireland a century ago, or more, and crossed with the native black Kerry cattle. The result of the crossing and recrossing was that some calves were pure black, others were masquerading blacks, and others were pure red. ”