FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 117 



require a special and local set of circumstances to 

 bring their benevolent effects *into operation. 



Interbreeding between near relatives becomes fatal ' 

 to physical imperfection ; but the drift of testimony 

 goes to show that it is innocuous to perfection.* 



* A majority of the most celebrated breeders and improvers of 

 English cattle have been close in-and-in breeders, such as Bakewell, 

 the founder of the improved long-horn or New Leicester cattle, Price, 

 "the most successful Hereford cattle breeder on record until twenty 

 years ago," the Collins, Mason, Maynard, "Wetherill, Sir diaries 

 Knightly, Bates, the Booths, &c, &c., breeders of Short-Horns. In 

 the first volume American Short-Horn Herd Book (edited by Lewis F. 

 Allen, Esq.), are diagrams showing the continuous and close in-and-in 

 breeding which produced the bull Comet, by far the most superb and 

 celebrated animal of his day, and which sold at Charles Colling's sale, 

 for the then unprecedented price of $5,000. His pedigree cannot be 

 stated so as to make the extent of the in-and-in breeding, of which he 

 was the result, fully apparent except to persons familiar with such 

 things, and such persons probably need no information on the subject. 

 But this much all will see the force of: the bull Bolingbroke and the 

 cow Phenix, which were more closely related to each other than half 

 "* brother and sister, were coupled and produced the bull Favorite. Fa- 

 vorite was then coupled with his own dam and produced the cow 

 Toung Phenix. He was then coupled with his own daughter (Yoimg 

 Phenix) and their produce was the world-famed Comet. One of the 

 best breeding cows in Sir Charles Knightly's herd (Restless) was the 

 result of still more continuous in-and-in breeding. I will state a part 

 of the pedigree. The bull Favorite was put to his own daughter, and 

 then to his own grand-daughter, and so on to the produce of his produce 

 in regular succession for six generations. The cow which was the re- 

 sult of the sixth interbreeding, was then put to the bull Wellington, 

 " deeply interbred on the side of both sire and dam in the blood of 

 Favorite," and the produce was the cow Clarissa, an admirable animal 

 and the mother of Restless. Mr. Bates, whose Short-Horns were 

 never excelled (if equalled) in England, put sire to daughter and grand- 

 daughter, son to dam and grand-dam, and brother to sister, indiffer- 

 ently, his rule being "always to put the best animals together, 

 regardless of any affinity of blood," as A. B. Allen informs me he dis- 

 tinctly declared to him, and indeed as his recorded practice in the Herd 



