I02 MATING. 



colour when they gain their adult coat. This the experienced 

 fancier well knows, though the tyro often destroys that which 

 will ultimately prove of value, simply from ignorance. An 

 instance of the brown-black kitten is before me as I write, 

 in a beautiful Persian, which is now changing from the dull 

 kitten self brown -black on to a brilliant glossy, jetty 

 beauty. 



BLUES. 



Blue in cats is one of the most extraordinary colours of 

 any, for the reason that it is the mixture of black which is no 

 colour, and white which is no colour, and this is the more 

 curious because black mated with white generally produces 

 either one colour or the other, or breaks black and white, or 

 white and black. The blue being, as it were, a weakened' 

 black, or a withdrawal by white of some, if not all, of the 

 brown or red, varying in tint according to the colour 

 of the black from which it was bred, dark-gray, or from 

 weakness in the stamina of the litter. In the human species 

 an alliance of the Negro, or African race, and the European, 

 produces the Creole, the mulatto, and other shades of coloured 

 skin, though the hair generally retains the black hue ; but 

 seldom or ever are the colours broken up as in animal life, 

 the only instance that has come to my knowledge, and I 

 believe on record, being that of the spotted Negro boy, ex- 

 hibited at fairs in England by Richardson, the famous show- 

 man ; but in this case both the parents were black, and natives 

 of South Africa. The boy arrived in England in September, 

 1809, and died February, 18 13. His skin and hair were 

 everywhere parti-coloured, transparent brown and white ; 

 on the crown of his head several triangles, one within the 

 other, were formed by alternations of the colour of the hair. 

 In other domestic animals blue colour is not uncommon. 

 Blue-tinted dogs, rabbits, horses of a blue-gray, or spotted 

 with blue on a pink flesh colour, as in the naked horse 

 shown at the Crystal Palace some years ago, also pigs ; and 



