DEGENERATION OF ANIMALS. 15 



One thing more may perhaps properly belong to this topic, and 

 that is the tainting of the mother's blood, or the influence of the 

 first conception on the after progeny. What I mean by this is, 

 if you have a Jersey heifer, and wish only to get the milk, you 

 put her to a scrub bull of no known breed, and get what you want, 

 viz., milk. If you should afterwards wish to get a thorough-bred 

 calf, the probability is, you would make a failure, as her after 

 progeny would partake in a greater or less degree the qualities of 

 that first conception. The same thing has been observed in the 

 horse, the sheep and the dog. But as this subject will probably 

 be treated at length by others during the Farmers' Convention, I 

 leave it in their hands, only saying to you, if you wish to breed 

 thorough-breds, of whatever class of animals, do not attempt to 

 breed anything else in connection with them, if you do not wish 

 them to degenerate. 



After all this array of testimony which I have presented to you, 

 in which more than three-fourths of our most celebrated animals 

 are proved to be from fully developed parents, is it not reasonable 

 to conclude that the only sure way to improve the different breeds 

 of our domestic animals, is to use such and only such for breeders ? 

 and if animals can be improved by the use of proper selections of 

 those which have arrived at maturity, will they not by the same 

 laws degenerate by a free and indiscriminate use of the young and 

 undeveloped ? I have been asked, during the past year, by a 

 disbeliever in thorough-bred animals, why our different races of 

 wild animals do not degenerate and eventually become extinct ? 

 and why the mustang of Mexico, and the wild horse of the Western 

 prairie have not degenerated since their first discovery ? Animals 

 taken from their native forests and domesticated by any stock 

 breeder who thoroughly understands his business, can, in a few 

 generations, be so entirely changed in almost every respect as to 

 be hardly named in the same category. All animals in their native 

 wilds are led by their own instincts to destroy all the weakly of 

 both sexes, and breed only after they arrive at full maturity. 



The Mexican mustang and wild horse of the West, are not 

 natives of this continent. The first horses known in North 

 America were those that so surprised the aborigines of Mexico 

 during its conquest by the Spaniards. All our wild horses 

 doubtless sprang from the Spanish blood horse of the sixteenth 

 century ; and I presume no one will contend that it is not a 

 degenerate race fi-om that celebrated stock. Probably they have 



