COLOURS OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS.
[To THE EDITOR 01 THE • 8necTATon.'1
SIR,—In the interesting paper on the above subject in the Spectator of February 11th, the able writer remarks :— " Though black is the normal colour of nearly all the wild cattle and buffaloes, there is one species which is tawny. This is the short-horned buffalo of West Africa," &c. May I draw his attention to another exception,—viz., Boa primigenius, the original cattle of Great Britain, regarding which Professor Wallace, of Edinburgh University, in his " Farm Live Stock of Great Britain," says : " Although it has been asserted that the original colour of this species was black or mouse- brown, it is now pretty generally believed that the original colour was white with black or brown points, such as- may be seen in the more or less degenerate representatives of the species in the parks of Hamilton, Chartley, and Chillingham," of which latter herd Riitimeyer remarks : "It is the purest type that I have found of the original Boa." Again, speaking of the Chillingham cattle, Wallace remarks : —:' Under the white hair the skins are white in colour, and thus differ in a most important characteristic from the dark- skinned and white-haired animals belonging to the Zebu race —the Bos Indicus—the skins of which are mostly jet black.' Thus, following the writer's ingenious explanation of the origin of our "red, white, and roans," and "rubies," they are derived from crosses between the white-haired and white-skinned Boa primigenius and the dark-coloured Boa longifrons, whose tints we have shown in our Highland, Welsh, and Kerry
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