THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



DOGS. 

 I have not time to dwell upon the breeding of dogs, and 

 the difficulty of ascertaining the pedigree of these animals, iu 

 most cases, is considerable; hut, I believe that in the case of 

 sheep-dogs great care is taken to preserve the breed as pure 

 as possible, and considerable in-breeding takes place ; aud I 

 have yet to learn that these auimals have degenerated in con- 

 Bequeoce, or lost any of their health or efticieucy. The sheep- 

 dog is a marvel of serenity and sagacity ; unlike the con- 

 ceited aud petulant cur, he does not annoy you with his 

 iocessant yaffle, nor cringe to be fondled by you, but receives 

 you with a dignified courtesy, and, when on duty, rejects 

 caresses as ill-timed, and disdains familiarity. His marvellous 

 accomplishments are everywhere recognized. 



" His Iionest, sonsie, baus'nt face 

 Ay gat him fricn's in ilka place." 



Mr. Meynell Ingram's (better known by his original name of 

 Meynell) fox hounds, I kuow, are much in-bred. The breed 

 has been in the family for neatly two centuries, and " the 

 pack" is considered the finest in the kingdom, and affords a 

 striking contrast to another notorious pack whose owner 

 played all sorts of tricks both in the training and breeding of 

 his dogs; aud it was remarked of his pack, with no less truth 

 than humour, that "it would hunt anything, from an elephant 

 to an ear-wig." When the pack was sold by auction, the dogs 

 realized a shilling apiece ! 



CATTLE. 



Five weeks ago, viz., ou the 28th March, an important sale 

 of short-horned cattle took place at Milcote, near Stratford- 

 on-Avon, the stock of Mr. Adkina, and in the advertisements 

 of the sale, the stock was much glorified as " comprisiug some 

 of the best blood," and " being of the game unalloyed strain," 

 and as "offering to the public as mucli of the pure blood of 

 'Favourite' ae could be found in any herd." The cows were 

 described as "capital milkers and very prolific, )io< having 

 been pampered.'" Now, this stock was very much in-bred, 

 and the animals fetched enormous prices. A cow called 

 " Charmer" (a grand-daughter of Sylph), bred of Mr. Colling's 

 purest blood, and praised as " a most extraordinary milker," 

 was the great attraction of the sale ; thirty-one of her de- 

 scendants, many of them calves, were sold for £2,140, 

 averaging £69 each. 



The following passage is extracted from the Agricultural 



Gazette of March 24, 1860, 



"It is, however, unquestionable that the ability of cow or 

 bull to transmit the merit either may possess does in a great 

 degree depend up.jn its having been inherited by them through 

 a long line of ancestry. Nothing is more remarkable than the 

 way in wliich the earlier improvers of the Shorthorn breed 

 carried out their belief in this. They were indeed driven by the 

 comparative fewness of well-bred animals to a repeated use of 

 the same sire on successive generations of his own begetting, 

 while breeders now-a-days have the advantage of fifty different 

 strains and families from which to choose the materials of their 

 herd ; but wliether it were necessity or choice, it is certain that 

 the pedigree of no pure-bred Shorthorn can be traced without 

 very soon reacliing manj- an illustration of tlie way in which 

 " breeding in-and-in" has influenced its character, deepened it, 

 made it permanent, so that it is handed down unimpaired and 

 even streugtliened in the Jiands of tlie judicious breeder. What 

 an extraordinary influence has thus been exerted by a single 

 bull on the fortunes of the Shorthorn breed ! There is probably 

 hardly a single pure-bred Shorthorn that is not descended from 

 'Favourite' (252), and not only descended in a single line— but 

 descended in fifty different lines. Take any single animal, and 

 this bull shall occur in a dozen of its preceding generations, and 

 repeatedly up to a hundred times ! in the animals of some of the 

 more distant generations. His influence is thus so paramount in 

 tlie bleed that one fancies ha ha^ created it, and that the present 

 character of the vfhole breel is duo to the ' accidental' appearance 

 of an animal of extraordinary endowments on the stage in the 

 beginning of the present century. And yet this is not so; he is 

 himself an illustration of the ' breeding in-and-in' system — his 



sire and dam l.dvinfc Itiii liaU brother and sister, buih sot by 

 Foljambe. And tliis breeding in-aud-in has handed down his 

 influence to the present time in an extraordinary degree. Take, 

 for instance, the cow 'Charmer,' from which, as will be seen 

 elsewhere, no fewer than thirty-two descendants are to be sold 

 next Wednesday. She had of course two immediate parents, 

 four progenitors in the second generation, eight la the third, six- 

 teen ill the fourth, the number necessarily doubling each step 

 farther back. Of the eight bulls named in the fourth generation 

 from which she is descended one was ' Favourite.' She is one- 

 sixteenth ' Favourite' therefore on that account. But the cow to 

 which he was tlien put was also descended from 'Favourite.' 

 and so are eacli of the olhtr seven bulls and seven cws which 

 stand on the same level of descent with the gr. gr. g. dam of 

 ' Charmer.' And in fact it will be found on examination that in 

 80 far as ' Charmer's' pedigree is known, which it is in some 

 instances to the sixteenth generation, she is not one-sixteenth 

 only, but nearly nine-sixteenths of pure ' Favourite' blood. This 

 arises Irom ' Favourite' having been used repeatedly on cows 

 descended from himself. In the pedigree of 'Charmer' wo re- 

 peatedly meet witli 'Comet'— ' Cjmet' was by ' Favourite,' and 

 his dam ' Young Phoenix' was also by 'Favourite;' with 'George' 

 — ' George' was by ' Favourite,' and his dam ' Lady Giacj' was 

 also by 'Favourite ;'Jwith ' Chilton'—' Chilton' was by 'Favourite' 

 and his dam was also by 'Favourite;' with ' ftlinor' — 'Minor' 

 was by ' Favourite,' and his dam was also by ' Favourite;' with 

 ' Peeress' — she was by ' Favourite,' and her dam also by 

 'Favourite; with 'Bright Eyes'^slie was by 'Favourite,' and 

 her dam also by 'Favourite;' with 'Strawberry,'— she was by 

 ' Favourite,' and lier dam by ' Favourite ;' ' Dandy,' ' Moss 

 Rose,' among the cows, and ' North Star' among the bulls, are 

 also of similar descent. There is no difficulty therefore in un- 

 derstanding how this name appears repeatedly in any given 

 generation of the pedigree of any given animal of the Sliorlhorn 

 breed." 



There is a prevalent notion — an ill-founded one, I believe — 

 that uncauonical connexions are inexpedient. I have no ob- 

 jections whatever to strangers, provided they are of the same 

 race or breed, but the greatest repugnance to crossing — i.e., 

 coupling animals of different breed?, e.g. a Devon with a 

 Short-horn, or a Southdown sheep with a Leicester. The ob- 

 jection to relationship between auimals rests ia no solid foun- 

 dation. If they be healthy, well-form6d, aud of the same 

 breed, the circumstance of their being cousins, or brother and 

 sister, is of the smallest consequence, aud need occasion no 

 alarm. Wheu crossing has ouce been adopted, the breed can 

 only be kept up by crossing, and the selection of proper ani- 

 mals requires greater discrimination and the possession of 

 mental qualities of a superior order than is generally to be 

 met with amongst agriculturists. Hence arise the lamentable 

 failures we so frequently hear of. I think the tide has already 

 set iu against cross-breeding. When I promised several 

 months ago to read a paper on In-andiu breeding, I was 

 unaware that any one else was labouring in the same field. I 

 have, therefore, the greater pleasure in quoting the following 

 paragraph from a recent number of the Midland Counties 

 Herald: "From what we are uow witnessing, it appears to 

 be pretty certain that cross-breeding of cattle will in a few 

 years be well nigh abandoned, for the advocates of this system 

 find it difficult to maintain their ground ; while as regards our 

 sheep-stock especially, pure breeds are rapidly displacing the 

 mongrels which were so frequently seen a few years ago. 

 Many sheep farmers have, indeed, suffered severely from not 

 being content with good aud improving flocks, well adapted 

 to their locality, aud have found it au expeusive process to 

 repair the mischief caused by the introduction of au injurious 

 cross." I refer those who wish to see the relative merits of 

 the races and breeds of cattle treated of, to an elaborate paper 

 in the Quarterly Revieio for 1849, written by my friend and 

 preceptor the late Mr. Thomas Gisborne. 



SHEEP. 



I apprehend no opposition to the following criteria of a 



good sheep, viz., smallneaa of bone; great disposition to fatten; 



and early maturity ; a heavy carcase, whilst still retaining a 



hardihood and capability of doing well on scanty pasture, or as 



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