416 



The Journal of Heredity 



While these lines show a gradual de- 

 cline, it is a siu'prising result to find 

 that Bates maintained a strain for 

 forty years after the death of Favour- 

 ite in which there was a distinctly 

 closer relationship to the latter and 

 hence presumably a closer resemblance 

 than between an ordinary parent and 

 ofifspring. 



The Significance of Bates' Methods 



Bates' own view of inbreeding is 

 contained in a statement handed on 

 ]:)y Darwin^ "to breed in and in from 

 a bad stock was ruin and devastation 

 yet that the practice may be safely fol- 

 lowed within certain limits when the 

 parents so related are descended from 

 first-rate animals." 



The striking feature of his actual 

 practices as brought out by the above 

 diagrams is their uniformity through- 

 out his whole career. He did not in- 

 breed at the closest possible rate for a 

 few generations and then make violent 

 outcrosses. Neither did he concentrate 

 the blood of one bull for a few genera- 

 tions and then turn to a wholly dififer- 

 ent line. Whatever the basis in his 

 own mind, he actually pursued a steady 

 policy — maintaining a relationship of 

 nearly 60 per cent between the animals 

 he mated, maintaining a coefficient of 

 inbreeding of something over 40 per 

 cent and maintaining a relationship to 

 the foundation bull, Favourite, falling 

 only slowly from 76 per cent to 57 

 per cent in eight generations. While 

 our figures do not bring it out, it is 

 well known that he also steadily se- 

 lected for a certain type. The uniform 

 degree of inbreeding was doubtless a 

 somewhat unconscious result of a bal- 

 ancing between his desire to inbreed to 

 maintain his type and his constant 

 watchfulness over the characteristics 

 of his animals, leading to prompt 

 recognition of the need for a dash of 

 fresh blood. 



Through this system he must have 

 been able to maintain without effort a 

 close resemblance to Favourite in num- 

 erous features of quality and confor- 

 mation. The fixation of characters 



(40 per cent), was not so great, how- 

 ever, but that there was variation and 

 room for constant selection in which 

 he could strengthen those features of 

 the Ketton stock which he favored and 

 get rid of those which he disliked. 

 That he was able to mold the con- 

 formation into a distinctive type is the 

 universal testimony of his contempor- 

 aries. One of these speaks of seeing 

 his herd driven across country from 

 Ridley Hall to Kirklevington in 1830. 

 being "50 cows and heifers by 2nd 

 Hubback, all as alike as beans and 

 leaving a great impression wherever 

 they passed." The Booths also found- 

 ed their herds on Ketton stock and 

 their animals would probably show re- 

 lationship to Favourite of the order 

 of those shown by the Duchesses. In- 

 deed calculation would probably indi- 

 cate a fairly close relationship between 

 the Bates and Booth herds. Yet Bates 

 and Booth types were recognized as 

 distinctly different. This difference 

 must have been due largely to selection. 

 Livestock breeders like to compare 

 their work to that of one who molds 

 figures in clay, as suggested above. The 

 successful breeder is often spoken of 

 as molding the conformation of his ani- 

 mals to the ideal type which he has in 

 mind. If clay is to be worked into 

 shape it must have just the right plas- 

 ticity. Similarly with livestock. If 

 Bates had not maintained close rela- 

 tionship between the animals which 

 he mated, the relatively high degree of 

 inbreeding, and close relationship to one 

 animal (Favourite) his material would 

 probably have been too plastic. The 

 simultaneous variation in all characters 

 would have been more than he could 

 have contended with. If on the other 

 hand he had bred wholly within his 

 herd and between full brother and sis- 

 ter as far as possible, his material 

 would soon not have been plastic 

 enough to mold into shape. Undesira- 

 ble characters, moreover, would almost 

 certainly have become ineradicably 

 fixed. As it was, a low level of fer- 

 tility seems to have become fixed and 

 to ha\e doomed the efforts to maintain 



