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CHAPTER XI. 



PEDIGREE OR LINE BREEDING. 



EVERY desired quality which has become 

 characteristic of a race or strain of animals 

 is the result of repeated and continuous se- 

 lection, year after year, of breeding stock which 

 possesses that particular quality in more or 

 less perfection. This is equally true whether we 

 consider some purely " fancy " point such as the 

 pencilling of a Hamburgh pullet, or some useful 

 quality such as the laying of over i6o eggs in a 

 year, or the profuse milk yield of a highly bred 

 Jersey cow. Such a point may sometimes 

 occur occasionally, or as if by accident, in some 

 individual animal ; but if it occurs habitually, as 

 one mark of a strain or family, it has been bred 

 into it by many generations of selection. Some 

 seem to think that such is not the case with 

 wild animals ; but in reality it is in their case 

 even more so. Darwin has taught us that the 

 " natural selection " effected by surroundings, 

 food, struggle for bare existence, and competi- 

 tion amongst surplus numbers, is most severe ; 

 it is unmodified by pity or caprice ; and Nature 

 does not vary her methods save in long periods 

 and by imperceptible degrees. She does not 

 select like man, making one choice this year and 

 another the next, but her conditions are the 

 same for generations, and often for ages ; hence 

 the wonderful uniformity and permanence of 

 her patterns, as in the plumage of a partridge 

 when uncrossed by any foreign strain. 



It is in this sense that the proverbial phrase 

 of the breeder — " Like produces like " — is true. 

 The "family likeness" of children to their 

 parents is familiar to all. In most 

 Features cases it can be clearly traced, and 



Transmitted j^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^j^^^ j^ j^^^ ^^j. jj^ 



Inheritance. as a rule in one feature only. In 

 other cases some very strongly 

 marked feature is the predominant mark, and in 

 others no obvious likeness can be traced at all, 

 while there may be obvious mental or moral 

 resemblances. Supposing the father to have a 

 pronounced Roman nose, the feature will prob- 

 ably be recognised in a portion of his offspring, 

 while it may fail in other children, whose bodies, 

 however, show other resemblances, complicated 

 perhaps by stronger resemblances to the mother, 



or to other members of the families of both 

 parents. So much is apparent to all ; and in 

 many cases, where no obvious resemblance can 

 be traced to the direct parents, a very striking 

 one often appears to the grandparents, or even 

 to other ancestors still farther back. Thus we 

 see that features have a greater or less tendency 

 to reappear in posterity, even beyond the next 

 immediate step in the family pedigree ; and 

 some extraordinary features, such as the posses- 

 sion of six digits instead of five, are often thua 

 transmitted through successive crosses with 

 great pertinacity. Many facts of this kind go 

 to prove that every feature in every animal has 

 some tendency to repeat itself, and would do so, 

 more or less, were it not counteracted by other 

 tendencies. If one human parent has black hair 

 and the other brown, the black-haired parent 

 has a tendency to cause that feature in his 

 children ; but this is modified or counteracted 

 by that of the other to transmit brown ; and 

 both are modified by the colour of the hair in 

 ancestors farther back. And the result here in 

 any case is impossible of prediction, because 

 there are so many discordant tendencies, and 

 marriages have taken place quite irrespective of 

 the colour of the hair. 



The breeding which is to succeed in produc- 

 ing valuable animals, consists in throwing all 

 these tendencies into one desired direction, so 



that the influence of remote ances- 

 •v^at tors, of great-grandparents and 



the Breeder grandparents, as well as of the 

 ^°«s- parents, combine towards the desired 



point. Let us take a case. It would 

 be very easy to find a fowl which, from some 

 cross with the Dorking generations back, and 

 never repeated, exhibited the fifth toe. Though 

 really due to the long-back cross, such a fowl 

 may be so rare in that farmyard stock of to- 

 day, that we may almost call it an individual 

 variation ; however, we have got it. Breeding 

 from such a hen it is probable that a few (and 

 only a few) of her chickens may show the fifth 

 toe, the greater part reverting to the common 

 type. Mating a five-toed cockerel of this 

 produce to a five-toed pullet, the number of five- 



