212 MILCH CATTLE THE JERSEY 



their colour. The silver-greys soon lost caste, but not before 

 some mischief was done. Popular opinion accredited them 

 with producing very pale milk. The mulberry, a dull, dark 

 brown coat, with hair of a reddish tinge in it, is indicative of 

 rich milk. It is a colour of hair high in favour in America. 1 

 The colour of the bull is generally darker than that of the 

 cow, although fawns with black points are quite common. A 

 mulberry fawn or bronze is a good characteristic colour, and 

 the dark mulberry bull shows a dappled brown sheet over the 

 back and a light grey ring round the muzzle. This, and a 

 nearly allied dark brown with a " mealy mouth " or a silvery 

 ring and a light brown over the back and sides to the midrib, 

 are favourite and hardy colours. The second-prize bull of the 

 island in 1905 was black, with white legs and patches, and a 

 brown ridge up the line of the back-bone. Some cows are 

 black, shading into brown with white patches, like an Ayr- 

 shire, and with udder and teats also black. 



The original unimproved Jerseys described by the early 

 writers 2 were variously coloured, " commonly red or red and 

 white, occasionally cream-coloured or cream mixed with white, 

 black with a dingy brown-red about the nostrils and on the 

 back ridge," and also " black, and black and white." Most of 

 these colours still appear among well-bred cattle. Blue spots 

 on the white and a blue ring round the edges of white patches 

 are held to be good indications of milking quality. 



Thornton calls attention to the similarity of colouring, 

 and to the correspondence in the appearance of the older 

 forms of the Brittany, Kerry, Welsh, Cornish, Shetland, and 

 Ayrshire breeds. He further points out that these are 

 usually located in the vicinity of ancient Druidical remains, 



1 At the Jersey Spring Show, held on i8th May 1905, the following 

 were the respective numbers of the different colours of 214 cattle entered 

 in the Catalogue with colours stated : Fawn, 72 ; fawn and white, 1 5 ; 

 grey-fawn, 10; light fawn, 5 ; dark fawn, 3 ; brown, 53 ; grey-brown, 10 ; 

 dark and light brown, 6 and 8 ; dark grey-brown, 2 ; brown and white, 5 ; 

 mulberry, 4 (probably some of the mulberries were entered as browns or 

 blacks of sorts); grey, 8; dark grey, 5 ; light grey, 3 ; and the remainder, one 

 specimen of each, black, black and white, light and dark grey-brown, and 

 grey and white. 



2 Thomas Quayle, author of The General View of the Agriculture, etc., 

 of the Islands on the Coast of Normandy, 1812 ; Garrard on Varieties of 

 Oxen common to the British Islands. 



