1 Aprir, 1898. ] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 265 
To put sires of our acknowledged breeds to small cattle indiscriminately 
picked up, and to depend upon stock bred from such parents as foundation 
animals for our proposed new breeds, would be a system no practical breeder 
could recomn:end. Unless we can put our hand upon a small breed of eattle 
whose bulls and cows haye an amount of inherent prepotency, we can only 
expect to breed cross-bred mongrels. Happily, however, we have a small breed 
of cattle peculiarly adapted for our purpose, and it is somewhat interesting that 
their prepotency, which adapts them for sucha purpose as we have in view, has, 
in our opinion, been the outcome of neglect. We refer to the Dexter breed 
of cattle, and, as this breed may not be known to readers, it may be well to 
give a few particulars regarding it. 
Kerry, the home of the Kerry breed of cattle, is situated on the south- 
western coast of Ireland, and is to a large extent mountainous, and, agricul- 
turally speaking, extremely poor. In a wide extent of the country the surface 
is almost one continued expanse of rock. The farms or holdings are small, 
and it is no uncommon sight to see fields, one, two, three, and more acres, 
marked off by stone walls, where even under spade cultivation not 1 per cent. 
of their extent is available for cropping. As can be easily understood, there 
are better and worse tracts of country, and in the~better portions we find the 
Kerry cattle, a breed possessed of many valuable qualifications as dairy stock. 
Along with the Kerry cattle, and, speaking broadly, in the higher and poorer 
portions of the country, are to be found the Dexters. 
It has been put on record that the Dexters owe their name to having been 
brought before the public by a Mr. Dexter, agent to Maude Lord Hawarden. 
“This gentleman is said to have produced this curious breed from the best of 
the mountain cattle of the district. He communicated to it a remarkable 
roundness of form and shortness of legs. The steps, however, by which this 
improvement was effected have not been sufficiently recorded ; and some doubts 
may exist whether the original was from a pure Kerry or some other breed 
roper to the central parts of Ireland now unknown, or whether some foreign 
blood, as the Dutch, was not mixed with the native race.” 
Such are the particulars given in the first volume of the Kerry and Dexter 
herd-book regarding the Dexter breed of animals. 7 
Judging from what one sees at the present day, it would seem as if the 
late Mr. Dexter could haye had no lack of material when he set about building 
up his herd. Through carelessness on the part of the stockowners in the 
poorer districts of Kerry, their cattle had become intensely in-bred, and, 
through the law of “the survival of the fittest,” a short-legged, wide-chested 
breed of animals had been evolved, admirably fitted to gather a sustenance on 
the high, steep, poor—almost barren—mountain sides. No doubt Mr. Dexter 
selected his herd with great care, and bred with much judgment; but everything 
oints to the fact that Dexter cattle are nothing more than intensely in-bred 
erries, let them be crossed and recrossed by whatever breed they may, even by 
a breed that may have been registered for a long series of years, and experience 
has proved the extraordinary prepotency of the Dexters, Instances might be 
uoted of first crosses from the Dexter and Shorthorn, Dexter and Hereford, 
exter and Aberdeen Angus, when but for a change of colour or the absence 
of horns it would have been impossible to detect there had been any mixture 
with the Dexter blood. We have unquestionable evidence of the prepotent 
poner of this breed in the beautiful herd of Dexter Shorthorns owned 
y Major Barton, Straffan House, county Kildare. At Straffan can be seen a 
number of animals bred from a foundation Dexter cow, and the result of four, 
five, and six consecutive crosses of pure Shorthorn bulls, yet possessing the 
Dexter type in a marked degree. What, however, is more extraordinary, bulls 
owning five direct and consecutive Shorthorn crosses upon the original Dexter 
foundation (which mathematically means an almost entire obliteration of the 
Dexter) are practically Dexter themselves, and when put to pure-bred Short- 
horn heifers leave stock of the Dexter type. 
