552 THE PEOPLE 'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



A shorthorn bull of a strain long bred for beef and not for 

 milk, can not be expected to cross on the native cows and 

 greatly improve both beef and milking qualities. It may do so 

 if the bull is descended from a line that not many generations 

 back excelled as milkers, as many of the shorthorn family once 

 did. But such a cross will insure improved beef points, without a 

 shadow of doubt. That is breeding up and not down. But 

 even that kind of breeding calls for a knowledge of the ances- 

 tral lines of the bull to enable the farmer to dictate a cross that 

 will lead him to the end he works for. A distinguished author- 

 ity has said : " We are fully convinced that even for cross-breed- 

 ing, the purer the blood on the paternal side, the more clearly 

 will excellence be stamped on the progeny." 



Difficulties attending Cross-breeding. The men who 

 resort to cross-breeding are not usually breeders of any well- 

 established breed. There is a great and powerful tendency of 

 any well-bred type to reassert itself, though temporarily ob- 

 structed. The great director of the Agricultural School of La 

 Chamoise, speaks forcibly of the difficulties met in his attempt 

 to establish a Chamois breed of sheep by using the English ram 

 on a French ewe. Most of the lambs resembled mother more 

 than father. A few resembled both. After many years attempt- 

 ting to establish a breed of sheep from English and French pure- 

 bloods, he cut the Gordian knot by seeking the rams of great 

 purity and antiquity of pure blood, and crossed them on " French 

 ewes of mixed blood, or of no breed at all." 



Mania for Out-crossing. There is a mania for out- 

 crosses among farmers that is not founded on large experience 

 or science, but arises rather from the commonly accepted opinion 

 that close breeding is dangerous. They do not recognize that 

 indiscriminate breeding is disastrous. Out-crossing is resorted to 

 by the inexperienced for the same reasons that lead to in-and-in 

 breeding is practiced by breeders and improvers of pure-bred 

 animals. George Cully lays down the following rule: "And 

 where you can no longer, at home or abroad, find better males 

 than your own, then by all means breed from them, whether 

 horses, neat cattle, sheep, etc., for the same rule holds good 



