THE CONDITION OF A STALLION. 45 



is indeed no other than what hath been given by those 

 who have undertaken this argument before me. You 

 will ask me what is that ? 'Tis this, that no man keep 

 company with his wife for issue sake, but when he is 

 sober — as not having before either drunk any wine, or, 

 at least, not tc such a quantity as to distemper him ; for 

 they usually prove wine-bibbers and drunkards whose 

 parents begot them when they were drunk ; wherefore, 

 Diogenes said to a stripling somewhat crack-brained and 

 half-witted, « Surely, young man, thy father begot thee 

 when he w^as drunk ?' " 



Shakspeare intimates the same belief in making a hero 

 insult his enemies with the taunt 



« For ye were got in fear." 

 On no other known principle than this condition, or a 

 peculiar state of the system at and before the time of 

 copulation, can be explained the important fact which 

 forms at once a criterion of skill in the scientific breeder, 

 and a stumbling-block to the ignorant and unreasonable 

 one, who would expect success without giving himself 

 the trouble of investigating the natural law^s which govern 

 the subject of his operation : such a person is too apt to 

 argue wdthin himself that because the same parents at 

 different times produce offspring of opposite character- 

 istics, there can be no certain rules by which to create 

 determinate qualities in the progeny : such a one would 

 maintain that, because all the children of one married 

 couple are usually somew^hat different in characteristics 

 from each other, there can be no means of predicting, 

 with an approach to certainty, the qualities to be pro- 

 duced in the offspring by a particular sexual intercourse. 

 Now this law of condition accounts for the difference 

 between individuals produced at several births from the 

 same parents. The case of twins, in the human species, 

 serves to strengthen this argument, inasmuch as the two 



