WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT 
INBREEDING IN EUROPE 
last few years to be recognized in 
Europe as one of the most valuable 
instruments of the live stock breeder. 
So says Chr. Wriedt, who has spent the 
winter in the United States as a repre- 
sentative of the Norwegian department 
of agriculture, studying the position of 
breeding and genetics here. 
Mr. Wriedt notes that, apart from the 
professional geneticists and a few great 
breeders, those concerned with live 
stock in the United States still display 
a good deal of suspicion and misunder- 
standing of the use of inbreeding and 
linebreeding. European breeders, too, 
used to be skeptical. Their attitude 
was influenced largely by the authority 
of the German scientist, Settegast, who 
dominated the field of live stock breed- 
ing half a century ago, and who de- 
nounced consanguineous breeding in 
every form. 
“The first impartial investigation,” 
says Mr. Wriedt, “was started by 
Count Georg Lehndorff, who was in 
charge of the governmental horse- 
breeding operations in Prussia for a 
generation, and exercised a great influ- 
ence for good on the art of breeding. 
Through studies of the pedigrees and 
progeny of thoroughbred horses, he 
came to the conclusion that moderate 
inbreeding! was largely responsible for 
the best records; and his publications, 
beginning about 1880, mark the com- 
mencement of the new school of breeding 
in Germany. 
“But the turning point, in Germany, 
is the publication in 1909 of A. de 
Chapeaurouge’s great book on inbreed- 
ing, in which he analysed the pedigrees of 
English thoroughbreds, Anglo-Norman 
[stew year has come during the 
1JIn other words, what we call line-breeding. 
trotters in France, and the best private 
studs of East Prussia. He was in many 
ways a pupil of the Australian, Bruce 
Low. The greatest defect of de 
Chapeaurouge is that he was born too 
soon to be a good geneticist—he is quite 
out of sympathy with the Mendelian 
movement. 
“His work was based wholly on prac- 
tical breeding; on the analysis of actual 
pedigrees. It really led to the founda- 
tion of a whole school of breeding on the 
continent, and to the foundation of the 
German Genetic Association,’ a power- 
ful organization which has worked inces- 
santly to promote intelligent breeding. 
PEDIGREE-STUDY EMPHASIZED 
“The guiding spirits of this association 
are two able men, Dr. Felix Hoesch, the 
president, a breeder of Belgian horses 
and swine, and Dr. Georg Wilsdorf, 
the secretary, who is in charge of live- 
stock breeding in the province of 
Brandenburg. These men combine to 
an unusual degree the viewpoints of the 
practical breeder and the geneticist, 
and under their leadership the German 
Genetic Association has published a 
series of valuable yearbooks, fifteen 
monographs on various breeds, and a 
score of bulletins on topics in scientific 
breeding, particularly as related to the 
study of pedigrees. Pedigree-study is, 
in fact, the keynote of the association’s 
activity, and the interest which the 
breeders take in it may be judged from 
the fact that Wilsdorf’s ‘Pocket Pedigree 
Book’ for the black and white cattle, a 
breed corresponding to the Holstein- 
Friesians, is now in its fourth edition.” 
“And what do they learn from all 
this pedigree study?” 
Much of the so-called inbreeding in Europe 
is not of a close character, and in the United States would never be called inbreeding, but merely 
line-breeding. 
to have 3,400 members. 
204 
The difference, of course, is merely one of degree. 
2 Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Zachtungskunde. 
Its headquarters are in Berlin, and it is said 
