PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF BREEDING. 105 



doubt it is. The "accidental" traits which arc developed 

 in breeding from pure animals of the same blood never, I 

 suspect, at one bound, embrace quite such comprehensive 

 particulars as a change, not only in the essential character- 

 istics of the wool, but also in the general form of the carcass.* 



But trustworthy cases of the vigorous transmission of 

 accidental properties, involving visible changes, are sufficiently 

 numerous. Involving slight changes or variations, not 

 recognized as such by casual observers, they are more 

 numerous. It is by noting these last, and cultivating the 

 good ones, that the judicious breeder makes some of his best 

 improvements. How otherwise can he possibly raise the 

 progeny, in any given point, above the plane of its parents, 

 and of all its ancestors? But while the breeder should avail 

 himself of every opportunity of this kind to attempt to 

 perpetuate accidental improvements on the pre-existing type, 

 lie must be prepared to meet with more disappointments 

 than successes. My Merino ram " Premium " mentioned 

 particularly in "Sheep Husbandry in the South," and in 

 some other publications, for his extraordinary individual 

 qualitiesf perhaps the finest wooled sheep then on record 

 for one of equal weight of fleece, and ranking in the former 

 particular with the choicest Saxons did not get progeny 

 peculiar for fineness. His own ancestors had been fine for 

 the breed, but not remarkable in that particular. One of the 

 showiest Merino rams now in New England does not inherit 

 his showy traits, and he utterly fails to transmit them to his 

 progeny. Exceptional good qualities are not, according to 

 my observation, as likely to become hereditary, as indifferent 

 or bad ones. 



Accidental characteristics are less likely to be perpetuated 

 where they are opposed to the special characteristics of the 

 breed. For example, the Merino wool has had a peculiar 

 curled or spiral form of the fibei', for ages a fixed, marked 

 trait, never wanting, and as much a characteristic of the wool as 

 its fineness. Mons. Graux's first straight-wooled " Mauchamp 

 Merino" ram, if an accidental instead of a mongrel animal, 

 brought only his own individual power to transmit that 

 peculiarity to his progeny (out of full blood Merino ewes) 



* It will be seen that I have not introduced the case of these sheep with any view 

 of illustrating: the transmission of actual "accidental" qualities but to caution my 

 readers against what I have not a shadow of doubt is either an amusing case of 

 credulity or a gross attempt at imposition. 



t Sheep Husbandry in the South, p. 135. American Quarterly Journal of Agricul- 

 ture, 1845 ; ib, 1846, p. 290. Report ou Fine-Wool Husbandry, 180:2, pp. 65, 97. 

 5* 



