FIXING GOOD TRAITS 11 



one rule that has actuated the developer of special 

 races has been to apply the principle of inbreed- 

 ing. When an individual appeared in a herd or 

 flock that showed certain peculiarities that the 

 owner thought desirable, the natural and obvious 

 way of perpetuating these was to breed from that 

 individual; and then persistently, for a time, to 

 inbreed the progeny in order to accentuate the 

 desired trait. 



The result has often been all that could be 

 expected. Take, for instance, the case of the 

 trotting horse. 



It is, I believe, a matter of record that practi- 

 cally the entire stock of trotters, as developed 

 in America in the past hundred years, descended 

 from a single ancestor, the celebrated "Messen- 

 ger." This individual horse chanced through 

 some accidental mixture of ancestral strains to 

 combine in its organization the particular quali- 

 ties of nerve and muscle that adapted it for rapid 

 progress by trotting instead of by the more 

 natural method of running. 



And as regards this quality or combination of 

 qualities, the horse proved amazingly prepotent. 



Its descendants soon constituted a race of trot- 

 ters. Pedigrees were kept; the best individuals 

 of the new race were selected as breeders ; closely 

 related animals were mated; and the character- 



