CHAP. i. CHANNEL ISLANDS CATTLE. 71 



paler in winter, this being due to the food. The Guernsey cow has 

 not been spoiled or badly damaged by breeding, according to the whims 

 of fashion, nor has she yet been bred to develop her highest qualities. 

 Her colour varies from orange fawn to pumpkin yellow, broken more 

 or less with white. There is also a very dark solid red, much resembling 

 the Devon. There is likewise the brindle, black and white. Low, in 

 his book on ' Domestic Animals,' published in London in 1841, gives 

 the coloured plate of an Alderney cow with calf at side. The cow is 

 orange fawn and white, with darker shade on the head and neck, and 

 dark nose with a circle of reddish tint around it. The end of the tail is 

 white, the tip of the horns black. The calf is of a lighter orange fawn 

 with greater extent of white ; triangular forehead, and buff nose. 



" The late Rev. Joshua Watson is the only one who, to our re- 

 collection, bred for colour. He went in for the solid lemon fawn, and 

 brought out the noted and famous strain of Cloth of Gold. But the 

 general colour, and that which becomes the Guernsey well, is the light 

 red and white. 



" If the Guernsey cow has often been compared to a bag of bones 

 her abundant yield of rich butter preventing her laying on fat there 

 comes a time when, in the fattening stall, she will compare favourably 

 with any other beef breed. After milking herself away to a skeleton, 

 and once becoming dry, she will take on flesh like a bullock, losing the 

 thin neck and chin of the deep milker and underlaying her hide every- 

 where with a fatty deposit. This tendency to lay on fat quickly when 

 dry is possessed by most Guernseys, and is a very important charac- 

 teristic, after ten or fifteen years of good work at the pail, after 

 giving twelve or fourteen calves, after yielding on an average a pound 

 of butter a day during that period." 



Mr. Housman says of the Jerseys and Guernseys, " The two breeds, 

 although they may have been occasionally crossed with each other, are 

 bred to two very distinct patterns. The red and yellow colours of the 

 Guernsey, usually with white markings and buff noses (although the 

 black nose is sometimes seen), are but little removed in character from 

 the colours of some of the old Teeswater cattle, the stock from which 

 the modern Shorthorn grew ; but the Jersey colours have a strong 

 peculiarity not seen in any other cattle of the British Islands. It is in 

 the way in which one colour grows through another, especially in the 

 so-called whole-colours or colours unbroken by white markings ; for 

 example, frosted silver on a black, a dun, or a fawn ground. The effect 

 is caused by silver-white hairs, scattered thinly over the body, outgrow- 

 ing at certain seasons of the year the closer hair of the ground colour. 

 In the hotter months this finer and longer hair is often cast, leaving 

 the ground colour clear or nearly so. Hence, in descriptions in show 

 catalogues or sale catalogues, when any attempt is made to supply more 

 definite particulars of colour than ' whole ' or ' broken,' and another 

 season has followed that in which the notes of colour were taken, the 

 animals do not agree with the descriptions given. The same peculiarity 

 may be observed in at least one of the Swiss breeds, which possibly has 

 some remote ancestral connection with the Jersey." 



