MATING. 99 



mother. The same males might be used with advantage with 

 a tortoiseshell female. This is on the theory of whole colours, 

 and patches or portions of whole colours, without bars or 

 markings when possible. In the same way some of the best 

 almond tumbler pigeons are bred from an almond cock 

 mated to a yellow hen. The difficulty here, until lately, has 

 been to breed hens of the varied mottling on almond colour, 

 the hen almost invariably coming nearly, if not quite yellow — 

 so much so that forty to fifty years ago a yellow hen was 

 considered as a pair to an almond cock, in the same way as 

 the red tabby male is now regarded in respect to the tortoise- 

 shell female ; and it was not until at Birmingham, many 

 years ago, when acting as judge, I refused to award prizes 

 to them as such, that the effort was made, and a successful 

 one, to breed almond-coloured hens with the same plumage 

 as the cock — that is, the three colours. With cats the matter 

 is entirely different, it being the male at present that is the 

 difficulty, if a real difficulty it may be called. 



Mr. Herbert Young, a most excellent cat fancier and 

 authority on the subject, is of opinion that if a tortoiseshell 

 male cat could be found, it would not prove fertile with a 

 tortoiseshell female. But of this I am very doubtful, be- 

 cause, if the red and the yellow tabby is so, which is 

 decidedly a weaker colour, I do not see how it can 

 possess more vitality than a cat marked with the three 

 colours ; in fact the latter ought, in reality, to be more 

 prolific, having black as one of the colours, which is a strong 

 colour, blue being only the weak substitute, or with white 

 combined. A whole black is one of the strongest colours and 

 most powerful of cats. 



Reverting once again to the pigeon fancier by way of 

 analogy, take, as an instance, what is termed the silver- 

 coloured pigeon, or the yellow. These two, and duns, are, 

 by loss of certain pigments, differently coloured and con- 

 stituted (like the tortoiseshell among cats) from other varieties 

 of pigeons of harder colours, such as blues, and blacks, or 

 even reds. For a long time silver turbit cock pigeons were 

 so scarce that, until I bred some myself, I had never seen 



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