EARLY IDEAS ON INBREEDING AND CROSSBREEDING 5 



than first cousins had become legally and morally taboo. Perhaps we may 

 follow Westermarck in assuming that endogamy became passe, not because 

 its biological ill effects were recognized, but because men knew their kins- 

 women too well to marry one of them if they could possibly get a wife 

 elsewhere. 



It is possible that we have thus far paid too much attention to inbreeding 

 and outbreeding in man. Our excuse is that there are almost no other records 

 of inbreeding from classical times. There are no plant records, of course, for 

 sex in plants was not understood in spite of the general practices of caprifica- 

 tion and hand pollination of the date palm. Records of inbreeding and out- 

 crossing in domestic animals are almost completely lacking even in the 

 copious agricultural literature of the Romans. Aristotle's History of Animals. 

 576al5 (Thompson 1910) does state that horses will cover both their mothers 

 and their daughters ". . . and, indeed, a troup of horses is only considered 

 perfect when such promiscuity of intercourse occurs" — but he seems to 

 be almost alone in referring to the subject. Later on in the same book 

 (630b30) he cited a happening which we quote. 



The male camel declines intercourse with its mother; if his keeper tries compulsion, he 

 evinces disinclination. On one occasion, when intercourse was being declined by the 

 young male, the keeper covered over the mother and put the young male to her; but, when 

 after the intercourse the wrapping had been removed, though the operation was completed 

 and could not be revoked, still by and by he bit his keeper to death. A story goes that the 

 king of Scythia had a highly-bred mare, and that all her foals were splendid; that wishing 

 to mate the best of the young males with the mother, he had him brought to the stall for 

 the purpose; that the young horse declined; that, after the mother's head had been con- 

 cealed in a wrapper he, in ignorance, had intercourse; and that, when immediately after- 

 wards the wrapper was removed and the head of the mare was rendered visible, the young 

 horse ran away and hurled himself down a precipice. 



This behavior of the stallion was considered so remarkable that it was 

 described by Aelian, Antigonus, Heirocles, Oppian, Pliny, and Varro. 

 Varro confused the tradition and made the horse bite his keeper to death. 



It is fairly safe for us to assume that in both classical and medieval times 

 the flocks and herds were greatly inbred. Transportation difficulties would 

 have insured inbreeding unless its evil effects were realized, and we have at 

 least negative evidence that they were not. Varro, who gave many detailed 

 directions for the breeding of all domestic animals, does not even mention 

 the question of kinship between sire and dam. We do have an interesting 

 literary allusion by Ovid, however, to the routine inbreeding of domestic 

 animals in his account of the incest of Myrrha in the tenth book of the Meta- 

 morphoses. The affair between Myrrha and her father Cinyras was like that 

 of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta. The fates had decreed that Myrrha 

 should become the mistress of her father. Torn by her unholy desires she 

 debates the matter with her conscience. Her better nature argues (From 

 the metrical translation of Brookes More, 1922): 



