CROSS-BREEDING. 209 



adhere more tenaciously to family distinctions than 

 sheep, and the longer the blood has been kept pure 

 and unmixed with that of another family, the more 

 powerfully do they resist a foreign connection ; and 

 in the case under our immediate consideration, the 

 opposition to a coalition of natures is doubly power- 

 ful, as it is a forcing of the creature farther from a 

 state of nature into one more artificial, more depend- 

 ent, and more directly under the management of man. 

 . . . After a course of twenty or twenty-five years, at 

 which period the Cheviot peculiarities are got tolera- 

 bly well-established, and every attribute of the old 

 race seems to be completely suppressed, an individual 

 lamb will, in some generations, still exhibit the wild 

 air and shaggy coat of the ancient maternal line." * 



Sir John Sinclair remarks that, " as to any attempt 

 at improvement by crossing two distinct breeds or 

 races, one of which possesses the properties which it 

 is wished to obtain, or is free from the defects which 

 it is desirable to remove, it requires a degree of judg- 

 ment and perseverance to render such a plan success- 

 ful as is very rarely to be met with." a 



In summing up the arguments in favor of cross- 

 breeding, Mr. Spooner says : " Although the benefits 

 are most evident in the first cross, after which, from 

 pairing the cross-bred animals, the defects of one breed 

 or the other, or the incongruities of both, are perpet- 

 ually breaking out, yet, unless the characteristics and 

 conformation of the two breeds are altogether averse 

 to each other, Nature opposes no barrier to their suc- 



1 Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, vol. i., pp. 176-179. 

 8 " Code of Agriculture," p. 95. 

 10 



