THE GENESEE FARMER 



369 



OBSERVATIONS ON IN-AND-IN 



BREEDINGS 



Not having the honor to belong to the veterinary 

 profession, I do not regularly read your very able pe- 

 riodical, though my attention has lately been called 

 by a fiiend to an article in the number for May last, 

 on the subject of "Animal Physiology, and breeding 

 Farm Stock," in which the writer most strongly 

 reprobates the practice of in-and-in breeding. It so 

 happens that I am well acquainted with Mr. Barkord, 

 0,f Northamptionshire, who is mentioned by name 

 therein; and having some opportunities of seeing his 

 management of his sheep, and his practice with re- 

 gard to in-and-in breeding, I take the liberty of 

 troubling you with a few lines in reply to Mr. Lanxe's 

 paper. 



That gentleman has adduced several instances, or 

 rather related several anecdotes, "as the data on 

 which he founds the argument, that consanguinity in 

 blood among parents leads to degeneracy in the off- 

 spring." But, to me, they by no means satisfactorily 

 firove his position. His long quotation from Mr. 

 uwrence's lectures about the Angola sheep makes 

 rather for than against the practice of in-and-in breed- 

 ing, as it clearly recognizes the possibility of retaining 

 varieties of animals by ^'preserving the race pure,^' 

 by selecting for propagation the animals most con- 

 spicuous for size, or any other property we may fix 

 on. In this way we may gain sheep valuable for the 

 fleece, or the carcass, large or small, with thick or 

 thin legs ;' just such, in short, as we choose. The 

 other instances he mentions, as of Hallers, " two 

 noble females," of Mr. Marsh, of Ryton, having 

 produced an " appalling malformation " in the produce 

 of a son with his mother, and others, only prove, 

 what I presume Mr. Lance will at once admit, viz., 

 the truth of the old adage that " like begets like," 

 and that where any imperfections, moral or physical, 

 exist in the parent, they will most likely reappear in 

 tlie offspring, whether bred in-and-in or not. 



As a set-off to one of Mr. Laxoe's instances, I may 

 mention that Bakewell found that good qualities 

 were also transmissible, and in as great a degree as 

 evil ones. And it is rather singular that he founded 

 the oliservation in the results of an experiment (among 

 others) exactly similar to that of Mr. Marsh, having 

 found that a sow of his never bred so good pigs as 

 when put to her own son. And allow me to ask Mr. 

 Lante whether "the deformities of mind and body," 

 which, according to Mr. Lawrence, spring up so plen- 

 tifully in our large cities, cannot be amply accounted 

 for by the intemperate habits, the vicious indulgencies, 

 the vitiated atmosphere, the unhealthy occupations, 

 the undrained and unventilated halntations in which 

 so niany of onr urban population live and have their 

 being, without having recourse to " the want of selec- 

 tions and exclusions" to which he has alluded ? P^or 

 it must be borne in mind that, in agricultural districts, 

 the same "want of selections and exclusions" exists 

 as in the cities, without, as Mr. Lance must admit, 

 anything like the amount of mental and bodily de- 

 formity which " degrades the race " in the towns. 

 And supposing, for the sake of argument, that the 

 state of many of the royal houses in Europe be such 

 SLS Mr. Lawrence implies, may it not be possible that 



many generations of luxurious indulgence and unre- 

 strained passions, which, perhaps, are inseparable from 

 their exalted position, may not, by their continued 

 though gradual effect on the constitution, sufficiently 

 account for it, without attributing it wholly to the 

 fact of their being restricted to some ten or twenty 

 families in the choice of husbands and wives? But 

 to return to sheep-breeding. 



I gather, from what Mr. Lance implies rather than 

 from what he says, that he imagines Mr. Barford 

 allows the most promiscuous and indiscriminate inter- 

 course among his flock. There cannot be a greater 

 mktake. The most continued vif>ilance is exercised 

 to prevent the propagation Of any defect, should they 

 appear, and, to use Mr. Lance's own words, "it is 

 only the best that are allowed to continue the race." 

 In this I presume Mr. Barford only follows the exam- 

 ple of every other breeder; and not to do so, would at 

 once stamp a man with the most ridiculous imbecility. 



If the cousins, of whom Mr. Lance has spoken, if 

 the white breed of fowls in Hampshire, if Mr. Marsh's 

 hogs, if the " silly " sheep in Wiltshire, in fact, if the 

 subjects of any of the in-breeding experiments he 

 mentions, had any " deficiency of nervous energy^' 

 and " weakness of malformation," in short, any defect 

 whatever, it is evident to the narrowest mind that the 

 nearer the affinities, and the longer they are bred so, 

 the more decided will those defects become. But it 

 must be absurd to attribute them to the bare fact of 

 in-and-in breeding. Mr. Lance must prove that aH 

 cross-bred animals are free from all defects, before he 

 can say that. In fact, I should regard failure in in- 

 and-in breeding experiments as the most irrefragable 

 evidence of defect in the parent or parents, and nothing 

 more. I often think that it must be to misapprehen- 

 sion on this point that much of the unmitigated hos- 

 tility to in-and-in breeding is to be attributed. Peo- 

 ple, by some means or other, get hold of the idea that 

 the advocates of the system mean universal and indis- 

 criminate in-and-in breeding, than which nothing can 

 be more absurd. 



But let us see where Mr. Lance's favorite system 

 will lead him when carried into practice. As the end 

 and aim of all crossing is of course improvement, all 

 breeders may hope to (nay, if the theory be correct, 

 they must, at some period or other) reach a point be- 

 yond which there is no improvement to be made by 

 crossing ; that is, they will produce a perfect animal, 

 or, at least, one more perfect than anybody's elsre. 

 Now, sir, allow me to propound this question to Mr. 

 Lance: When a man has arrived at this point — when 

 he has exhausted every source of improvement which 

 the kingdom, nay, which the world, affords — what is 

 he to do ? It is evident he must adopt one or the 

 other of the following courses : Either he must feed 

 off and consign to the butcher l»oth his males and 

 females, without any more ado; or he may allow them 

 to live to an unprofitable maturity, and a useless old 

 age, and die at last a natural death ; or he may caD 

 in Mr. Stafford, and disperse to the four quarters of 

 the globe the fruits of perhaps a life-time of care, 

 trouble and anxiety, besides enormous expense, and 

 begin again de novo; or he may knowingly, and with 

 his eyes open, by crossing them with animals inferior 

 to themselves, retrograde, step by step, to the medi- 

 diocrity and inferiority with which he set out in the 



