BREEDING. 189 



fitted to be a farmer at all? But it is a very 

 different thing to secure by breeding a succession of 

 animals in quality and shape not unequal to their 

 ancestry, even when you have the first grand 

 elements in your own hands. 



There is no doubt that some of the best crosses 

 have been accidental, both in cattle and horses. One 

 family has, to use a technical phrase, "nicked in" 

 well with another. There are few celebrated lines of 

 race-horses, sheep, or shorthorns, of which there is no 

 story to tell behind the scenes, no relation of a lucky 

 hit. After all, is not "mauve" but a fortunate 

 combination of colours 1 All honour, still, to the 

 inventor. For the difficulty of such success is illus- 

 trated by the recent offer of 10,000£. by a Manchester 

 manufacturer to an eminent artist for the invention 

 of a new fast colour. So far accidental, however, in 

 breeding are these crosses, only that they have hap- 

 pened to turn up more thoroughly trumps than was 

 anticipated, as the Crystal Palace grew from the 

 notion of a greenhouse. The judgment of the 

 breeder has usually had a strong prescience of 

 the compatibility of the elements combined, and 

 an idea of what the result probably might be, 

 but he can rarely rest quite sure of it. Riddles 

 may be built by rule to order, and biographies 

 teach us that wit, as improvisation and extem- 

 pore preaching, has been, and is, reduced to the 

 precision of an art. So, too, of breeding. The 

 great rule is to breed from animals that have inhe- 

 rent in them an ascertained type ; that is, such as 

 come of a line which has been for ages, or at least 



