(36 ■ BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



right hands with the little finger distorted. A bitch had her hinder 

 parts paralyzed for some days by a blow. Six of her seven pups 

 were deformed, or so weak in their hinder parts that they were 

 drowned as useless. A pregnant cat got her tail injured ; in each 

 of her five kittens the tail was distorted, and had an enlargement 

 or knob near the end of each. Horses marked during successive 

 generations with red-hot irons in the same place transmit visible 

 traces of such marks to their colts. 



Very curious are the facts which go to show that even acquired 

 habits sometimes become hereditary. Pritchard, in his " Natural 

 History of Man," says that the liorses bred on the table lands of 

 the Cordilleras " are carefully taught a peculiar pace which is a 

 sort of running amble ;" that after a few generations this pace 

 becomes a natural one ; young untrained horses adopting it with- 

 out compulsion. But a still more curious fact is that if these 

 domesticated stallions breed with mares of the wild herd, which 

 abound in the surrounding plains, they " become the sires of a race 

 in which the ambling pace is natural and requires no teaching." 



Mr. T. A. Knight, in a paper read before the Royal Society, says, 

 "the hereditary propensities of the oflspring of Norwegian ponies, 

 whether full or half-bred, are very singular. Their ancestors have 

 been in the habit of obeying the voice of their riders and not the bri- 

 dle ; and horse-breakers coifiplain that it is impossible to produce 

 this last habit in the young colts. They are, however, exceedingly 

 docile and obedient, when they understand the commands of their 

 masters." 



A late writer in one of the foreign journals, says that he " had a 

 puppy taken from its mother at six weeks old, who although never 

 taught to 'beg' (an accomplishment his mother had been taught) 

 spontaneously took to begging for every thing he wanted when 

 about seven or eight months old ; he would beg for food, beg to be 

 let out of the room, and one day was found opposite a rabbit hutch 

 begging for the rabbits." 



If even in such minute particulars as these, hereditary transmis- 

 sion may be distinctly seen, it becomes the breeder to look closely 

 to the "like" which he wishes to see reproduced. Judicious 

 selection is indispensable to success in breeding, and this should 

 have regard to every j^iarlicular — general appearance, length of 

 limb, shape of carcass, development of chest; if in cattle, the size, 

 shape and position of udder, thickness of skin, "touch," length and 

 texture of hair, docility, &c., &c. ; if in horses, their adaptation to 



