i92 CYCLOPEDIA OF LIVE STOCK AND COMPLETE STOCK DOCTOR. 



female must not be bred to a male widely different from herself. Good 

 mares of the common mixed breed may l>e bred to staunch thorough- 

 breds to refine, and to give style, symmetry and speed to the foals ; to 

 Percherons, or Clydesdales, to increase the size and strength for draft ; to 

 the Cleveland Bay, to begot handsome, able horses for the farm and car- 

 riage, and to well-bred trotting stock to get good horses for the road, and 

 for all work. 



An historic animal strikingly illustrating our meaning was the widely 

 celebrated horse Gold Dust, a horse of mixed blood, got by Vermont 

 Morgan, out of a dam nearly or quite thoroughbred, it will serve to 

 s^ "tw a result of cross breeding. The progeny partakes more of the 

 thorough than of the mixed blood. The famous Shales, a half-bred 

 horse foaled in England, early in the century, and noted during 

 his whole life as a most wonderful trotter, shows the result of a 

 thoroughbred sire, with a dam of mixed lineage. Here the pre- 

 ponderance is in favor of the thoroughbred sire. The noted Der- 

 vish shows an example of pure breeding, and probably of close, or 

 at least line, breeding. He was a little bay Arab, of great style 

 and fineness, remarkable for his darting, square trot ; that is, for throwing 

 out the fore-leg, and str.'''ghteniiig the knee before the foot touched the 

 ground. 



Vlll. The Best are Ctieapest in the End. 



The highly-bred trotters of to-day, those quite or nearly thorough- 

 bred, show the value of breeding ni line, that is, we repeat, the breeding 

 together of animals of close descent, or those having characteristics in 

 common. Many of our best thoroughbred racers show examples of in- 

 and-in breeding, and, as a rule, those bred in the same line of descent are 

 more uniform in their qualities, than those which have been produced by 

 the union of many sub-families of the same original blood. The objec- 

 tion to close in-and-in breeding is, that, if persisted in, it will ultimately 

 result in weakening the constitution, while at the same time it refines. 

 To establish a breed it must be closely followed, departing from the rule 

 only when undue delicacy of constitutional vigor is feared. In the wild 

 state, gregarious animals, such as horses and cattle, breed in-and-in for 

 two or three generations, or until the strongest males become enfeebled 

 with age, or are obliged to succumb to j^oungcr and more Aigorous ones ; 

 which is in accordance with the principle of the survival of the fittest, 

 and may be called a modification of in-and-in breeding alternated with 

 breeding to line. The same rule would be a sound one, if modified by 

 careful selection, in the artificial breeding of domestic animals, always 

 keeping in mind that in sheep, and especially in swine, the rule must not 

 be so closely followed. But in all this, remember constantly that tV' 



