IN-BREEDING OUT-CROSSING. 63 



description or another, of The Drone, Sleight of Hand, Van 

 Amburgh, Legerdemain, Flatcatcher, and Phryne, but no doubt 

 can be entertained as to the incomparably higher value of the 

 two last, produced within moderate relationship, than of the 

 other four, the offsprings of close in-breeding. 



All these investigations and comparisons seem to point, I 

 should say, to the fact that in-breeding in mares, even if once 

 or twice repeated, need not render us absolutely distrustful as 

 to their value at the stud; that, however, on the whole, the 

 mating of the best individuals within the chosen families, mod- 

 erately related, is preferable for the production of brood mares 

 as well as stallions, because such mating within the same strains 

 of blood may, as occasion requires, be repeated without danger, 

 as no apprehension of thereby weakening the constitution need 

 be entertained. 



It is evident, however, that the observance of this principle, 

 if continued ad infinitum, also is not without danger to the 

 lasting prosperity of the breed, for the more frequently the 

 mating of animals, standing to one another in even a mod- 

 erate degree of kin only, is resorted to, the more will gradually 

 become the in-breeding in the whole species of thoroughbreds, 

 necessitating, at perhaps a not far distant period, the infusion 

 of new blood by occasionally importing into England sires of 

 pre-eminence from other countries. 



Experience points to America as the source from which to 

 draw in future the regenerating fluid ; for although the Amer- 

 ican thoroughbred takes its origin from England, and is still, 

 more or less, related to its English prototype, the exterior ap- 

 pearance and the more recently shown superiority of American 

 horses lead to the conclusion that the evidently favorable cli- 

 mate and the, to a great extent, virgin soil of America in 

 every respect different from ours gradually restore the whole 

 nature of the horse to its pristine vigor, and make the American 

 race appear eminently qualified to exercise an invigorating in- 

 fluence on the constitution of the thoroughbred in the mother 

 country, enfeebled, perhaps, by oft repeated in-breeding. 



