516 Transactions of the 



Within the past thirty or forty years a hardly less persistent effort 

 has arisen among another class of breeders to develop a cow of great 

 beauty, gentleness of disposition, continuous milking, and of extreme 

 richness of product. This effort took its rise in the Channel Islands, 

 and notably in Jersey, encouraged and seconded first in England, and 

 afterward in this country. The question of beauty lias concentrated it 

 very largely — we may say, so far as we are concerned, almost ex- 

 clusively — on the cattle on the Island of Jersey; and although yet in 

 its comparative infancy, there can be no doubt that its results will lie as 

 remarkable and as far beyond the earl}' standards set up, as even in the 

 case of the Short horn. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE JERSEYS. 



The origin of these cattle is exceedingly obscure. They probably 

 came first from Normandy and Brittany with the earl}* settlers, perhaps 

 a thousand years ago; but their characteristics are now quite different 

 from those on the mainland, and are doubtless an outgrowth of climate, 

 soil, and habit. If we could imagine France to have been the center from 

 which the cattle spread with the movement of the Gauls to the east 

 and south, and of the Normans to the Channel Islands, we should rind 

 a remarkable instance of the development of original characteristics in 

 opposite directions. Throughout Eastern France, Southern Germany, 

 and Northern Italy, the cattle are very largely — in some wide districts 

 almost universally — of solid color, with black switches, mealy noses, 

 and rather coarse horns. They are somewhat larger and more beefy 

 than the animals of Western France; and, as even the cows are regu- 

 larly worked, their product of milk seems to be neither very large nor 

 very rich. In the Channel Islands, while the same general character- 

 istics are to be traced, the question of color has obviously been disre- 

 garded, and a large majority of cattle have more or less white disposed 

 in patches, white switches more often than not, white legs and feet, 

 finer horns, and much less size and fleshiness; on the other hand, they 

 are, for their size, very large milkers, their milk is of an extreme rich- 

 ness, and their leanness and general want of force are such as might be 

 expected of animals which do no work — not even the comparatively light 

 work of roaming over pastures. 



THE FORMATION OF THE TYPE. 



Perhaps if we were to seek for the radical cause of the great differ- 

 ence in flesh and in milking quality between these animals and their more 

 eastern congeners, we should find it in this very question of physical 

 work. The theories on the subject are not sufficiently well established 

 for scientific certainty, but it seems probable that the development of 

 muscle by physical exercise tends to divert the nutriment of the food to 

 the formation of flesh, leaving less to enlarge the quantity and enrich 

 the quality of the milk. Perhaps, too, the degree to which the fat- 

 forming portions of the food arc converted into cream in the udder 

 bears some relation to the demand which the lung action makes upon 

 these substances to supply carbon for oxidation in the process of breath- 

 ing. It is a well known fact that a cow driven long distances to and 

 from pasture produces less butter than one leading a more indolent life, 

 and the inference is that the increased respiration in this case consumes 

 hydrocarbons of the food, which, if not so destroyed, would be con- 



