

CROSS-BREEDING. 201 



and management, and bringing to bear on the new 

 breed to be formed an influence almost annihilated 

 by the multiplicity of its component elements. Now, 

 what happens when one puts such mixed-blood ewes 

 to a pure New Kent ram ? 



" One obtains a lamb containing fif ty-hundredths 

 of the purest and most ancient English blood, with 

 twelve and a half hundredths of four different French 

 races, which are individually lost in the preponderance 

 of English blood, and disappear almost entirely, leav- 

 ing the improving type in the ascendant. The influ- 

 ence, in fact, of this type was so decided and so pre- 

 dominant that all the lambs produced strikingly re- 

 sembled each other, and even Englishmen took them 

 for animals of their own country. 



" But what was still more decisive, when these 

 young ewes and rams were put together, they pro- 

 duced lambs closely resembling themselves, without 

 any marked return to the features of the old French 

 races from which the grandmother ewes were derived. 

 Some slight traces only might perhaps be detected 

 here and there by an experienced eye. Even these, 

 however, soon disappeared, such animals as showed 

 them being carefully weeded out of the breeding- 

 flock." 1 



Such was the origin of the Charmoise breed of 

 sheep. 8 



M. Girou " supposed that he would more speedily 

 obtain fine wool by crossing Roussillon sheep with 



1 Loc. tit., pp. 220, 221. 

 a For a full description of this valuable breed, see " Encyclopedie 

 Pratique de TAgriculteur," tome x., p. 682. 



