MENDELIAN ANALYSIS OF THE PURE 

 BREEDS OF LIVESTOCK 



II. The Duchess Family of Shorthorns As Bred By Thomas Bates 



Sewall Wright 



Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, 



IVasJiington, D. C. 



A VARIETY of cattle with short 

 horns and red, roan, and white 

 as the prevalent colors had long 

 been established in parts of Durham, 

 Yorkshire and surrounding counties 

 in England and had been bred to 

 a fair degree of excellence by the 

 middle of the eighteenth century. They 

 have been described from contemporary 

 accounts as "generally wide-backed, 

 well-framed cows, deep in their fore- 

 quarters, soft and mellow in their hair 

 and handling and possessing, with 

 average milking qualities, a remarkable 

 disposition to fatten. Their horns were 

 rather longer than those of their 

 descendants of the present day and in- 

 clining upward. The defects were 

 those of an undue prominence of the 

 hip and shoulder point, a want of 

 length in the hind quarters, of width 

 in the floor of the chest, of fullness 

 generally before and behind the shoul- 

 ders, as well as of flesh upon the 

 shoulder itself. They had a somewhat 

 disproportionate abdomen, were ' too 

 long in the legs and showed a want of 

 substance, indicative of delicacy, in the 

 hide. They failed also in the essential 

 requisite of taking on their flesh evenly 

 and firmly over the whole frame, 

 which frequently gave them an unlevel 

 appearance. There was, moreover, a 

 general want of compactness in their 

 conformation." This foundation stock 

 was thus decidedly open to improve- 

 ment. In fact, Robert Bakewell of 

 Dishley, whose leadership in the im- 

 provement of cattle and sheep we have 



already mentioned"* is said to have kept 

 a few of the old sort merely to set off 

 his improved Longhorns. 



The foundations for the improve- 

 ment of the Shorthorns were laid by 

 Charles Colling of Ketton farm, who 

 made a prolonged study of Bakewell 's 

 methods at Dishley in 1783. In the 

 following year he bought, among other 

 cattle, a massive, short-legged, wide- 

 backed cow named Duchess, who be- 

 came the progenitress of the family 

 which we are to study. Meanwhile 

 Robert Colling, a brother of Charles, 

 purchased the bull Hubback, who came 

 to be considered the best Shorthorn bull 

 of the time. One of his grandsons 

 was the noted bull Foljambe. Charles 

 Colling seems to have been sufficiently 

 impressed with the merit of the pro- 

 duce of Foljambe to begin efl^orts at 

 fixing their qualities by inbreeding. A 

 daughter. Phoenix, was bred to a son, 

 Bolingbroke, and produced (in 1793) 

 the bull Favourite, whose pedigree we 

 have already considered. Favourite 

 was inbred to a very appreciable ex- 

 tent (F = 19.3 per cent), not only 

 through Foljambe but through his 

 granddams, one of which was the dam 

 of the other. He is described as "a 

 large massive bull of good constitution 

 with a fine bold eye, remarkably good' 

 loins and long level hind quarters." 

 Mr. Colling was so satisfied with 

 Favourite that he began breeding him 

 to his daughters and granddaughters, 

 in some cases even for five or six 

 generations. Through the demand for 



*For numbered references see "Literature Cited" at end of article. 



405 



