44 THE BOSTON TERRIER 



ensue. Far better to let the bitch go by un- 

 mated and lose six months than mate her in this 

 way because a suitable stud dog was not at the 

 time available. I believe that this inbreeding 

 is productive of excessive nervousness, weak- 

 ness in physical form, the impairment of breed- 

 ing functions, and the predisposition to dis- 

 ease in its multiform manifestations. 



That eminent authority, Sir John Seabright, 

 the originator of the early race of bantams, 

 known as the silver and gold spangled Sea- 

 brights, also conducted an exhaustive series of 

 experiments on the inbreeding of dogs and dem- 

 onstrated to an absolute certainty that the sys- 

 tem was productive of weakness, diminished 

 growth, and general weediness. His experiments 

 had a world-wide reputation and the writer, when 

 he first visited his large estates near London, little 

 dreamed that in after years he would personally 

 benefit by Sir John's work. I believe the pre- 

 vailing ideas in many quarters a number of years 

 ago, as to the general stupidity of the Boston 

 terrier (and in some isolated cases I believed 

 well founded), arose from the fact that it was 

 popularly believed he was too much inbred. I 

 will give just one case of inbreeding in our ken- 

 nels, tried for experiment's sake, as a warning. 

 I took the most rugged bitch I possessed and 

 mated her to her sire, a dog of equal vigor. The 



