ie Sea 
XXVIII. 
MENDELIAN CHARACTERS AMONG SHORT-HORN CATTLE. 
By JAMES WILSON, M.A., B.Sc., 
Professor of Agriculture in the Royal College of Science, Dublin. 
[Read, May 19; Received for Publication, May 22; 
Published, Junz 19, 1908. ] 
In a paper “On the Inheritance of Coat-colour in Cattle,” 
published in Biometrika, volume iv., pp. 427-464, Miss A. Bar- 
rington and Professor Karl Pearson have collected statistics taken 
at random from volumes xxxvil. to xlix. of the ‘“ Short-horn 
Herd-book” as to the colours of 2172 calves and their parents. 
From these statistics it can be shown that, as regards colour, short- 
horns display Mendelian characters: the whites and the reds being 
the pure ancestral races, and the roans the hybrids. 
The following table (see p. 818) is Miss Barrington and 
Professor Pearson’s second and third tables combined :. the calves 
of both sexes being collected in one instead of being separated in 
two tables. 
But this table is framed with regard rather to the colours 
under which short-horns are entered in the Herd-book than to 
the origin and history of the breed. 
The short-horn breed of cattle originated in the eighteenth 
century on the borders of Durham and York, in a part of the 
country which was the meeting-ground of the three races of cattle 
then existing in Britain—the Celtic, the Roman, and the Saxon. 
In pre-Roman times the Celtic race inhabited the whole of 
the island. Its modern representatives are the black breeds of 
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. 
The Romans introduced a white race which they distributed 
throughout the parts of the country under their occupation. Its 
modern representatives are the white cattle of Wales, the ‘“ wild”’ 
SCIENT. PROC. R.D.S., VOL. XI., NO. XXVIII. 27T 
