JERSEY CATTLE BREEDERS. 37& 



Without a healthy, strong animal, a good feeder, of great vital endurance, it is 

 impossible to build up much of a creamery. The breeding that leads the most di- 

 rectly to these ends is the best, and that which interferes with any one of the con- 

 ditions is faulty. 



I believe sheep and poultry breeders find it better to cross flocks. Swine breed- 

 era have not attached enough importance to it, but they have not proven that 

 scrofula, cholera, and other diseases, so fatal to swine, may not be averted, to some 

 degree, at least, by a frequent crossing of families in breeding. It can hardly be 

 doubted that, with mankind, incestuous intercourse results in impaired and defect- 

 ive offspring. Dr. S. M. Bemis, of Louisville, Ky., by appointment of the Amer- 

 ican Medical Association, and after bestowing much time and labor upon the sub- 

 ject, in 1858, reported to the society the results of 873 cases of marriage among^ 

 blood kin, and of incestuous intercourse where there could be no legal marriag*^. 

 They were collected fi-om twenty-five States, with great care, and mostly reported 

 by members of that learned body. From such intercourse there resulted 3,942 

 children, of whom 1,134 were defective in body. Ten of these cases were between 

 brother and sister, or parent and child, resulting in thirty-one children, of whom 

 twenty-five were defective in body and mind, ranging from dwarfs and idiots to- 

 scrofulous, insane, deaf, dumb, blind, and hideously deformed persons. Six hun- 

 dred cases were between persons no nearer of kin than first cousins; 2,778 children 

 were produced, of whom only V93 were defective, and these were not so greatly de- 

 formed as those of the first class. 



By the then law of Ohio, statistics were gathered upon this subject. Included 

 in the above aggregate are reported from that State 155 cases, from which resulted 

 1,021 children ; of these, 244 were defective. From the same reports in Ohio were 

 taken, at random, and from the same counties from which the others were reported^ 

 so as to give a fair average, 125 cases of marriage between parties in no way re- 

 lated. Eight hundred and thirty-seven children were produced, of whom only 18 

 were defective. 



A like result was believed to exist in other States by the learned reporter of 

 these cases. 



A great proportion of the children of these blood relations died young, showing 

 diminished vital force. Here, then, is shown a rapid diminution of vital force 

 and bodily vigor and beauty, as we approach the most perfect cases of in-and-in- 

 breeding. 



Dr. Walshe says: "The mute, the dwarf, and the idiot, are as certainly the re- 

 sult of the marriage of blood relations, as sorrow is the offspring of sin." 



But, on the other han3, Dr. Voisin, of Paris, from observation of 1,077 cases in 

 the hospitals of that city, concluded that none could be traced to '■ healthy" con- 

 sanguineous marriages. But the word "healthy" parents can be made to atone 

 for any amount of deformity and disease, for, in any given cases, we have only to- 

 assume that the parents had some known or latent predisposition that produced the 

 defect, under and by virtue of the general law of atavism. 



Lewis F. Alien, in his valuable work on "American Cattle," while strongly ap- 

 proving in-and-in-breeding, feels constrained to say (vid. page 212): " We are 

 not an advocate of the practice now except in particular cases, and under peca- 



