46 THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



a sufficient argument against the intensification of good qualities. The 

 strain so bred, with its established quality, may raise the general 

 quality of the variety before the family or strain itself becomes 

 extinct. Even though the period of vigor for the strain should be 

 comparatively short, the breed as a whole partakes of the improve- 

 ment, and the good of the closely bred family is absorbed by the 

 mass as the result of the dissemination of stock birds. 



The fear of inbreeding is losing its terrors. It is becoming gener- 

 ally understood that a fixity of type can be secured and maintained 

 only through in-and-in breeding. When size and vigor are selected 

 the same as shape and color, no disease or deformity may be 

 attributed to close breeding as a cause. 



Linebreeding. Many cases of inbreeding do not represent line- 

 breeding. Linebreeding is commonly looked upon as involving the 

 breeding together of specimens of the same strain or family, but less 

 closely related than in inbreeding. This interpretation makes line- 

 breeding a mild form of inbreeding; but the fact is that linebreeding 

 may involve a very close form of inbreeding. 



When the application of inbreeding is in the hands of a thinker 

 who is ever drawing his blood lines from the past and projecting them 

 into the future; when inbreeding is practiced by a constructive breeder 

 whose aim is to concentrate the blood of certain individuals, then 

 inbreeding properly is termed "linebreeding." 



This term "linebreeding" was used originally by the cattle breeders 

 of England to indicate that the progeny were bred in a direct line 

 from a famous ancestor. 



Inbreeding is to breed within the line; yet related specimens may 

 be mated to very little purpose, and some inbred flocks are not line- 

 bred. If a cockerel is mated to his dam to fix or intensify some 

 quality possessed by the dam or characteristic or her sire and the 

 line from which she came, the progeny resulting from the union of 

 that cockerel mated to his dam are linebred. When a specimen is 

 truly a linebred bird it is the product of a system of breeding that 

 has been carried on to stamp certain desirable and valuable char- 

 acteristics of the ancestors on the offspring. 



Value of linebred birds. Breeders have been known to inbreed 

 their fowls for fifteen to twenty-five years without the introduction 

 of a single new bird. The most renowned producers of high quality 

 Standard specimens have been close breeders, without exception. 

 Invariably they have maintained that no evil effects accrue to line- 

 breeding. On the contrary, in, the case of these successful breeders, 

 their stock reaches such a high state of perfection that they know to 

 a nicety what may be expected from a mating before the chicks are 

 grown, and they dread the introduction of ^resh blood, fearing that 

 it will spoil the blood lines which it has taken them the greater part 

 of their lives to establish. 



Variation. While linebred strains can be counted upon to repro- 



