xlvi GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



vellous. What a different world ours would be Lad it 

 been peopled from first to last with sexless forms, with 

 millions of virgin females ! The antithesis of inter- 

 crossing (cross-fertilisation) is interbreeding (inbreeding). 

 Hence when we grossly inbreed we do our utmost to arrest 

 natui-e's supremest effort; for though all the elaborate 

 and intricate mental and physical processes are complied 

 with when close inbreeding is practised, there is little or 

 no real intercrossing. In inbred herds, e. g., the males 

 and females are so like each other that the offspring, 

 were it possible, might almost as well be raised by buds 

 or cuttings. In inbreeding the letter of the law is 

 observed, but not the spirit. In proof of this take the 

 case of the celebrated one thousand guinea bull " Comet.-'' 

 The ' Herd-book ' tells us that " the bull ' Bolingbroke ' 

 and the cow ' Phenix,' which were more closely i-elated 

 to each other than half-brother and sister, were coupled, 

 and produced the bull ' Favourite.' ' Favourite ' was 

 then coupled with his dam, and produced the cow ' Young 

 Phoenix.' He was then coupled with his own daughter 

 ('Young Phoenix'), and their produce was the world- 

 famed ' Comet.' " It must be admitted there was very 

 little intercrossing in the case of " Comet," there was 

 still less in " Clarissa," the dam of the celebrated cow 

 " Restless," and, as a matter of fact, many breeders do 

 their utmost to do away with intercrossing ; they act as 

 if they thought nature in introducing intercrossing had 

 blundered. This applies to fanciers and to breeders of 

 horses and sheep as well as to breeders of cattle. A 

 writer in the Field of April 9th, 1898, tells us he had 

 heard " Mr. Joseph Osborne, the ablest authority living 

 on British thoroughbreds, declare that you cannot now 

 get too much of Birdcatcher." But cross-fertilisation, it 

 may be mentioned, not only serves to maintain the organs 

 and tissues of plants and animals at a high state of 

 efficacy ; it fosters if it is not the prime cause of varia- 

 tion. It is conceivable in some planets less favoured 

 than our own the plan of cross-fertilisation has not yet 

 been arrived at, or, in transcendental language, has not 



