COLOUR BREEDING. 



347 



may have been silver tabby blood in the 

 strain, but certainly no chinchilla. For all 

 this I do not recommend a cream or tortoise- 

 shell cross, as the chances are all against the 

 kittens being any good, and it is laying up a 



understood, I have no fault to find ; I can 

 forgive him even his white chin, because he is 

 such a magnificent animal ; but he is not a 

 tabby, and should not be shown as such. 

 In the brown tabby we want dense black 



store of disappointments in the next genera- markings on a clear golden-brown ground. 



tion. We have all possessed cats which, 

 though beautiful in themselves, never threw 

 a kitten worth keeping. 

 I had a little cat my- 

 self bred from two chin- 

 chilla parents. The 

 dam was a well-known 

 winner, and her ances- 

 try was, I knew, irre- 

 proachable, and the 

 sire's appeared to be 

 equally so, though I 

 was told afterwards 

 that he often sired 

 brown tabby kittens. 

 But my queen (herself 

 a prize-winner), no 

 matter how she was 

 mated, invariably 

 threw brown tabby 

 kittens. 



We now come to the 

 very fascinating subj ect 

 of tabbies, and I may 

 as well say at once that 

 any amount of crossing 

 is for the present de- 

 sirable and even neces- 

 sary, but it must be 



1 LOLLYPOP 



The black is there right enough, but it wants 

 breaking up." A cross of strongly marked 

 red tabb}' is the thing ; 

 not a " self - orange," 

 mind you that would 

 only make things 

 worse but the best- 

 coloured red, with a 

 dark chin, that can be 

 found. When the 

 markings want intensi- 

 fying, as may be the 

 case after the red cross, 

 we must mate with a 

 black ; but I do not 

 think this will be neces- 

 sary, as brown tabbies 

 rarely "wash out " as 

 silvers do. It is curi- 

 ous to note that many 

 years ago I bred quan- 

 tities of beautifully 

 marked silver tabbies 

 and brown tabbies from 

 a brown tabby sire and 

 a sandy, silver tabby 

 dam, both of unknown 

 pedigree. The silvers 

 were clear and pure in 



ONE OK LADY MARCUS BERESFORD S 

 SILVERS. 



(Photo: IL. Lamior, Euling.) 



done systematically and under a careful and colour, with capital black markings, and the 



experienced eye. The novice* is likely to fail 

 because he does not understand the essential 



browns had good rich colouring. This is a 

 cross I should certainly hesitate to recom- 



points of a tabby. Let him keep before his mend, but there are possibilities concealed 



mind the fact that if two distinct black stripes 

 run the whole length of the spine and if the 

 chest markings are good there is not likely to 

 be much wrong with his cat's other markings. 



therein, and it is worth an occasional experi- 

 ment with the sole object of rescuing the 

 degenerate tabby markings. 



It is a curious fact that while the tabby is 



In the brown tabby, the markings have supposed to be the common ancestor of all 



become too heavy, they have run together and our cats, the tabby markings should be the 



spread into a heavy black saddle ; while the most difficult point to retain in the pedigree 



ground colour has lost warmth and white chins cat. 



are prevalent. With the " sable " cat, be it A brown tabby cat with a good-coloured 



