FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 115 



family hewing within it all the proper elements of im- 

 provement, if it could be done without breeding in- 

 and-in too closely. And some persons are quite too 

 easily frightened on the latter subject. What can be 

 made an evil by being carried too far, has, by much 

 talking and writing on the subject, been made an in- 

 discriminate bugbear at every stage of its progress. 

 It is by no means true that it is either unsafe or im- 

 proper to interbreed animals of any degree of re- 

 lationship. If it is, what has saved the Spanish 

 cabanas for ages ? or to take a specific instance (where 

 there is no latitude for conjecturing impossibilities), 

 what has kept up, nay, increased the size and vigor 

 and improved the form of Ferdinand and Louis 

 Fischer's flock for fifty years, when that flock started 

 with one hundred ewes of one family and four rams 

 of another family, and these families have since been 

 interbred without the admixture of a drop of fresh 

 blood ? Mr. Atwood's sheep present a still stronger 

 example. According to his statements, his entire 

 flock, now scattered by colonization into nearly all the 

 States of the Union, originated from one ewe, and 

 neither she nor any of her descendants in his hands 

 was interbred with other sheep not descended exclu- 

 sively from Col. Humphreys' flock. Mr. Hammond 

 bought a small number of Mr. Atwood's flock in 

 1844, and he has since, he assures me, interbred solely 

 between the descendants of those identical sheep. 



Is it probable that the Creator, who organized all 

 animals into either families, flocks or herds, which 

 strongly incline to remain together, and implanted in 

 none of them but man a disinclination to incest, at 

 the same time established a physical law which ren- 



