LIKE PRODUCES LIKE. 191 



eight, which, through their superior quality, and through the 

 better attention that is paid to them, will produce as much as 

 a dozen formerly did. And this State Board have gone so far, 

 in obedience to the wishes, I am happy to say, of a majority of 

 the farmers of this Commonwealth, as to pass a resolution last 

 year, that hereafter no society sending a delegate shall give a 

 premium to a bull that is not pure bred. Some farmers com- 

 plain of this ; but they are not prevented from raising a scrub 

 bull and using it for beef, if they please. All that is said is, 

 that those animals shall not be brought up and receive pre- 

 miums equal to a thoroughbred, and for this reason : because 

 every one knows that according to the laws of breeding, which 

 have been laid down by Mr. Flint, and other gentlemen who 

 have investigated this subject, a thoroughbred animal will pro- 

 duce a good progeny, while the stock of one which is not a 

 thoroughbred, although you might get at first a good-looking 

 animal, will run out, if you continue to use him. Therefore, 

 I think it is the unanimous wish of all the farmers of this Com- 

 monwealth, who understand this subject, that we shall only 

 give prizes to thoroughbred bulls. 



Now, farmers are disposed, sometimes, to doubt on this 

 point, and they say it is no object to look back to the pedigree 

 of an animal, but they do not doubt when they look at the 

 human family. Does not every man expect to find the likeness 

 of father or mother in the child ? Why, a man would have 

 doubts about the paternity of his child if he did not see in him 

 some likeness to himself. Do you find any old family in the 

 world that has not stamped its features, in some shape, upon 

 its descendants ? Take the case of Henry the Eighth of Eng- 

 land — a man of the strongest and most vigorous powers — a 

 man who first married a woman like himself in character, 

 Catherine of Arragon, whom he afterwards divorced. The 

 result of that union — because " like produces like " — was the 

 woman called " Bloody Mary." She inherited the strong qual- 

 ities of her father, and she inherited the pertinacity of her 

 mother. The result was, that notwithstanding all the adver- 

 sities through which she passed, and all the humiliations to 

 which she was subjected, she came out, when she was queen, 

 just the same character that was to be expected from her pa- 



