almost black in color, with a somewhat woolly coat. They were quite 

 tame and exceedingly domestic, allowing a boy to handle them, and 

 stood to be milked as well as any cow in the herd of Jerseys. 



Mr. Swain made some careful tests of the milk, in comparison 

 with that of his choicest Jerseys, and found that though the quantity 

 was small — being about ten quarts a day when fresh — it was how- 

 ever astonishingly rich, yielding fully twent}^-seven per cent of 

 cream, while the best of the Jerseys only marked twenty-five per 

 cent. One of the striking peculiarities that he noticed in the cream 

 was, though perfectly distinct, it was almost colorless, that is, white 

 like the milk. The milk was much sweeter than that of the common 

 cows, and contained but little water, and when curdled made a 

 remarkably tenacious curd, having not more than half the usual 

 amount of whey. 



From this time forward there appears to have been a much wider 

 interest taken in the production of catalo. The Western country 

 was being opened up and the cattlemen who were pasturing their 

 herds on the buffalo range had an opportunity to observe the hardi- 

 ness of this animal, who thrived under all sorts of climatic conditions. 

 A number of these Western cattlemen conceived the idea that it 

 would be a good plan to incorporate some of the good qualities of the 

 buffalo in their own herds by crossing the buffalo with their common 

 cows, and by so doing produce a superior breed of range cattle that 

 could stand the high altitudes and severe winters on the plains. 

 Prominent among these men who made successful experiments was, 

 Colonel Charles Goodnight, of Goodnight, Texas; Major Sam I. Bed- 

 son of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; Colonel C. J. Jones (Buffalo 

 Jones) of Garden City, Kansas; John E. Dooley of Salt Lake City, 

 Utah; James Philip (Scotty Philip) of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, 

 and Mossom M. Boyd of Bobcaygton, Ontario, Canada. There was 

 also quite a number of individuals owning small herds of buffalo 

 who experimented in cross breeding, for no particular purpose. 



There seems to have been quite a wide difference in the per- 

 centage of loss encountered by breeders in obtaining the first cross. 

 Major Bedson who crossed mostly with the grade Shorthorns claims 

 to have met with little or no loss whatever, while Buffalo Jones 

 states that in 1888 he bred eighty or ninety cows to six buffalo bulls, 

 and the following year they produced four calves, and he lost thirty 

 cows, but after that, he selected the type of cows that gave birth to 

 catalo with the least percentage of loss, and claims to have had no 

 further trouble. Jones crossed with a small number of different 

 breeds of cattle, but principally with the Galloways. Charles Allard 

 in 1893 purchased a herd of buffalo and catalo from Buffalo Jones, 

 and after two years of effort, with no results whatever, gave it up, 

 claiming that the loss in cows did not warrant his continuing the 

 business. 



As the buffalo have been successfully crossed with most all the 

 different breeds of domestic cattle, it would appear that the minimum 

 of loss was obtained by selecting cows having certain physical points. 



33 



