BREEDS AND THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 425 



in the breed of pigeons known as &quot; trumpeters,&quot; which is characterized by a tuft of feathers 

 over the beak, by a crest on the head, and a very peculiar coo. In crossing a trumpeter with 

 another breed of pigeons, and then recrossing the mongrels with trumpeters, he found it was 

 only at the fourth generation, and when the birds had fully fifteen-sixteenths trumpeter blood 

 in their veins that the tuft appeared, and even then, the peculiar trumpeting coo was absent. 

 Sometimes certain peculiarities will be transmitted much more forcibly than others, an exam 

 ple of which is given in the following incident as narrated by a correspondent of one of our 

 monthly journals: 



&quot; Several years ago a ship was wrecked near the Barnegat Bay (New Jersey) lighthouse. 

 A male cat, with a bob-tail about an inch long, got ashore alive from the wreck, and, in pro 

 cess of time, the cats in that vicinity began to give birth to kittens with bob-tails. A male 

 descendant of this cat is kept by one of my neighbors, about twenty miles distant from the 

 Barnegat lighthouse. What portion of the blood of the original he may have in him, no 

 one knows, but probably not over one-fourth to one-eighth. His color is calico, that is spot 

 ted, yellow and white. 



I have a female cat of the Angora breed, which is nearly all white only a few grey 

 spots on it. The tails of this breed of cats are extra long, and quite bushy, something like 

 those of the fox. Last June this cat was crossed by the above bob-tailed one, and the pro 

 duce was five kittens, four of them having the form and color of the mother, and one only 

 showing a little yellow of the sire mixed with its grey and white. But the curiosity of the 

 thing is that, notwithstanding the long bushy tail of the mother, every one of the kittens came 

 with a bob-tail, not exceeding an inch in length. 



It is frequently asserted by breeders that the male is prepotent over the female in trans 

 mitting certain characteristics, but this rule holds good to only a limited extent, the respec 

 tive influence of the sire and dam being modified according to certain conditions, which have 

 already been pointed out. Even among animals equally pure in breed, and equally desirable 

 as far as can be discerned by the external appearance, there will frequently be found a great 

 difference with respect to their ability to transmit these characteristics and enstamp them, as 

 it were, upon their progeny. Besides, in speaking of animals that are prepotent in transmit 

 ting their qualities, good breeders commonly term them &quot; getters of their kind.&quot; When 

 such an animal has been tested, it should be kept for breeding purposes as long as practicable, 

 since their services, having been well tested, are known to be much more valuable than those 

 possessing this power in a less degree. 



The Animal and the Pedigree. We have already given the most important gen 

 eral principles from which the judgment of each breeder will enable him to deduce many 

 details to be applied in practice, the first and most obvious of which is to &quot;breed only from 

 the best animals, not merely those that strike and fill the eye the most completely, but from 

 those that have the hereditary power, the capacity to transmit their good qualities in the 

 highest degree to their offspring, and the strongest evidence of this power will be the length 

 and perfection of their pedigree, showing the qualities of the ancestors for some generations 

 back, unless, indeed, some of their stock can be seen to tell as plain a story to the practiced 

 eye of a judge of stock. 



We have often heard practical men, intelligent men, who profess to know something 

 about stock, and who ought to know better, say, &quot; I don t care anything about your pedigree; 

 let me see the animal, and I can tell whether I want to breed from him or not.&quot; Let us not 

 deceive ourselves by any such assumption, from whatever source it may happen to come. It 

 will be sure to lead to frequent disappointment; for, an animal may possess almost faultless 

 form, and strike the eye of even the most experienced judge as possessing remarkably fine 

 qualities, and indeed really possess them, and yet have no fixity of type, no great heredity of 

 power; when, if put to a low or ill-bred female, he will be more likely than not to get poor 



