THE ABSENCE OF DOMINANCE 65 



Reds are not infrequently described as roans and roans 

 as reds. Lacking the experimenter's motive, breeders may 

 be inaccurate without being negligent, and may even be 

 biased luiconsciously by the wish to have a calf of one 

 colour rather than of another. As already mentioned, red 

 may run from whole red to very nearly white. When 

 the individual flecks are large or well defined, the chances 

 of misdescription are small, but, when they are small and 

 in some number, and, more especially, when the margins 

 between the white and the red are ragged and irregular, 

 the chances of a red being called a roan are not incon- 

 siderable. 



Roans may also be whole-coloured or flecked as the 

 reds are, but the areas which would be red in the red are 

 a mixture of red hairs with white in the roan. The chances 

 of misdescription lie in the fact that the proportion of 

 white hairs among the red varies, and, when it is small, 

 a roan is liable to be mistaken for a red. The reasons for 

 this variation are still obscure, although there are indica- 

 tions that the amount of white in the mixture and the 

 amoimt of flecking are related : the white hairs being 

 fewer when flecking is absent or small and plentier when 

 flecking is extensive. In crosses betweerf whole-coloured 

 black Galloways, for instance, and white Shorthorns, the 

 proportion of white hairs is usually small, while in crosses 

 between highly flecked Ayrshires and white Shorthorns, 

 the proportion is usually large. 



The experience in pure white breeds, such as the Charo- 

 lais, and in red breeds, of which there are several in Britain, 

 is that both colours always breed true ; and, from data 

 collected in volumes 37 to 49 of the " Shorthorn Herd 

 Book " and cited in 1906 in " Biometrika " by Miss 

 Barrington and Professor Karl Pearson, the whites and 



