842 A HISTORY OF SHORT-HORN CATTLE. 



collected all of these "absolutelys" he could 

 secure; the result of the venture being that 

 within two years he was forced to destroy the 

 calves as fast as the wretched degenerates came 

 into the world, and the sires and dams, with con- 

 stitutions ruined beyond repair, soon followed 

 their progeny to the shambles. It is scarcely 

 necessary to say that such an undertaking con- 

 sidered as a proposition in scientific breeding 

 was fore-doomed to failure-, and yet in the face 

 of this and other examples of the impossibility 

 of maintaining inbred strains indefinitely; with- 

 out admixture of other blood, men are still 

 found willing for the sake of possible financial 

 profit to repeat, in this respect, the follies of 

 the past. There are cases on record where ped- 

 igree speculators, who have closed out their in- 

 terests in time, have gained some financial ad- 

 vantage, but such men were not breeders within 

 the real meaning of the term. 



He only has made a genuine success of Short- 

 horn breeding who maintains or improves upon 

 the character of the animals received from 

 other hands. 



In-breeding. This is a two-edged sword. In 

 the hands of men who were adepts in its appli- 

 cation it brought about some of the great- 

 est successes known in Short-horn history. By 

 concentration of the blood of favorite animals 

 the distinctive types that have so largely domi- 



