106 IMPEOVEMENT OF THE BEEED8. 



what is termed a scrofulous habit, a breaking up of 

 the constitution, which, though produced by a variety 

 of causes, is yet frequently the result of an " owr sib" 

 connection. These are, I may say, the accidental 

 opinions of men who had no point to make good, in 

 which their credit was at all at stake, and who are not 

 endeavouring to support the crude opinions of former 

 years. For these reasons, they possess a value which 

 ought to give them a proportional weight in an investi- 

 gation like the present. Mr Bakewell succeeded in 

 bringing his sheep to great perfection as regards form, 

 and rapidity of fattening, by breeding in the same family 

 for a great many years ; but it was attended with con- 

 siderable deterioration in the quality of the wool, and 

 engendered a liability to disease, sulficient to deter any 

 one from proceeding a similar length in the same track, 

 to what is so dubiously called improvement. See what 

 Mr Dickson says to this effect, in a recent number of 

 the Quarterly/ Journal of Agriculture, " The evil of 

 breeding in-and-in, or in other words, producing too 

 great refinement of tone, is manifested in the first in- 

 stance by a tenderness of constitution ; the animals not 

 being able to withstand the extremes of heat and cold, 

 rain and drought. If the evil is prolonged through 

 several generations, the forms of the animals become 

 affected, the bone becomes very small, the neck droops, 

 the skin of the head becomes tight and scantily covered 

 with hair, the expression of the eye indicates extreme 

 gensibility, the hair on the body becomes thin and 

 short, and the skin as thin as paper ; the points con- 

 tinue good, and predisposition to fatness increases, 

 but the whole carcass becomes much diminished in 



