recrossing was that some calves were pure black, others were masquerading blacks, and others were pure red. The red colour is not admired by Kerry breeders, and no attempt has been made to keep it; but, because of the difficulty of identifying and, so, eliminating them, when masquerading blacks are mated together, red calves are occasionally born. If these red calves were kept and bred from, the Kerry black breed could eventually be converted into a red breed. By doing this, the Highland breed of cattle has been changed from one that once was largely black to one that is now largely red.
But the Kerry breed is of further interest because, while the Devons transmitted to it their red colour in potentia, they also transmitted their shortness of leg. In this case shortness was dominant to length. The result of the crossing was that some calves were pure short-legged, others were masquerading as short-legged, and others were long-legged. Thus among each of the three different colours of Kerry cattle—pure blacks, masquerading blacks, and reds—there are pure short-legged animals, masquerading short-legged animals, and long-legged animals. That is to say, among Kerry cattle now, as compared with Kerry cattle long ago, there are some possessing characters, redness and short-leggedness, which have been transmitted to them
