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IMPROVEMENT IN THE BUEED. 



hereditary, and will go on assuming a worse and worse 

 type till the breed be destroyed. Culley, however, was 

 of opinion, that less risk is run by breeding in-and-in 

 than is generally supposed, and instances the wild cattle 

 in Chillingham Park, in the county of Northumberland, 

 which, having been confined for several hundred years 

 without intermixture, must have bred from the nearest 

 affinities, and yet are just as they were five hundred 

 years since. With all due deference, however, to the 

 opinion of the late Mr Culley, I must assert, that I can- 

 not perceive in what manner wild cattle can be made to 

 illustrate the case in point, as it must be evident, that 

 animals in a state of nature differ essentially from those 

 in charge of man, in regard to the propagation of infir- 

 mities, as the former, if born with a radical defect, will, 

 ten to one, never see the age which suits them for re- 

 production ; while the latter, from the care bestowed 

 upon them, will, even when very delicate, in many in- 

 stances be bolstered up till they have entailed upon 

 posterity an accumulation of their already aggravated 

 maladies. The system of breeding in-and-in proves, 

 in fact, as destructive to flocks, as marriages of near 

 relations to the human kind. We would not witness 

 an e very-day entailment of diseases, if people would 

 forego their unnatural love of money, and cease their 

 endeavours to keep it in '* the family," by forming ma- 

 trimonial alliances with those who are near of kin. The 

 law of God forbids us to wed those who stand in certain 

 degrees of propinquity ; but, if we and our descendants 

 avail ourselves of the limits of this law, and marry on its 

 veige a certain number of times, misery must infallibly 

 be the lot even of the tenth generation ; and instead of 



