F. Pitt 299 



was agreed that the animal should be kept and reared as a future sire " 

 and "the progeny of this very bull became celebrated for white faces" (8). 



This calf, born about 1750, appears to have been a true sport or 

 mutation, and as he had considerable influence on the breed it is 

 possible that we here have the origin of the strongly dominant white 

 fece as it at present exists, but it must not be forgotten that we find it 

 recorded that by 1788 the white-faced variety was so widely spread as 

 to be considered typical of the cattle of the county, so probably there 

 were many white-faced beasts in existence prior to 1750, for we can 

 hardly credit that the progeny of one bull would have over-run the 

 district in the space of 38 years. 



We see from these few notes that the Hereford has arisen by selection 

 from the nondescript cattle bred in the county of Herefordshire during 

 the I7th and early part of the 18th centuries, that all sorts of colours and 

 markings prevailed, among which the red with white face was most 

 common, and that it is probable a mutation occurring in a herd of dark 

 cattle helped to fix this characteristic, which, when the beef qualities 

 and other points of the breed began to receive attention, became the 

 most popular type of marking among breeders, other colours being 

 eventually eliminated, so that it is only in a few small variations and 

 departures from type that we see in the modern Hereford any survival 

 of the variously marked and coloured cattle of the early days of the 

 breed. 



5. General Summary and Conclusion. 



The evidence that has been gone into in these pages establishes the 

 fact that Mendelian inheritance is the rule with regard to the colours 

 and markings of Hereford cattle, each character being controlled by a 

 separately heritable factor, so that it would be possible, were experiments 

 with such slow breeding and valuable animals a financial possibility, to 

 combine the factors for all the characters mentioned in a single beast. 



We have seen that excessive white is a simple recessive to the typical 

 form of pigmentation, that extension of pigment is due to a dominant 

 factor, which is neutralised in its action when it chances to be combined 

 with the W factor, so that a normally marked beast might carry both 

 characters, and transmit them separately, or combined, to its progeny. 

 If this animal had a pale brown coat, and was heterozygous for the 

 recessive purple-coat factor, and had in addition a dirty nose and red 

 eyes, we should have such a beast as that referred to above, combining 



