12 THE BREEDING PROBLEM. 



lisliecl types — but rather that in some respects the offspring resembles the 

 fatlier, in otliers the; mother; in some forminc^ a partial or exact mean between 

 the two; and in still others we find the produce utterly unlike either, giving it 

 an individuality or character of its own. We might illustrate this by 

 instances from liic experience of every breeder, but it is not necessary. The 

 effect has been ())).served by all who have given any attention whatever to the 

 subject of breeding. 



The foregoing extract is taken from a very able and philosophical 

 article in the National Live Stock Journal^ and as this matter of the 

 certain transmission of acquired qualities, and the fact that such qual- 

 ities can also be and are acquired and changed as the result oi 

 judicious selections and training in the hands of the intelligent breeder 

 and handler lies at the threshold of the subject of breeding trotting 

 horses, I have deemed it proper to present my readers here with 

 various extracts both from the same series and other articles in that and 

 other journals. It is a subject that is worthy of our most careful con- 

 sideration. 



Where animals in a state of nature are not disturbed in the enjoyment of the 

 conditions under which they have existed for ages, as the American bison, or 

 buft'alo, the elk, the deer, the wolf, etc., the uniformity which prevails among 

 all the individuals of the race is remarkable; and all the peculiarities of 

 structure, color and character are transmitted from generation to generation 

 with almost unerring certainty ; and here the maxim of the breeder, that " like 

 produces like," scarcely ever meets with an exception. Such animals are, 

 in the truest sense of the word, tlioroughbred, or purely bred. There has 

 been no commingling of blood, or crossing of various strains, to give the race 

 a composite character, and hence, when we have seen the sire and dam, we 

 can toll with certainty what the progeny will be. Were any of our domesti- 

 cated animals t7ioroughbreds, in the sense that the bison, the elk or the deer 

 are thoroughbreds, the breeding problem would be a simple one, and like 

 would produce like as long as the conditions of life remained the same. The 

 same principle holds true in the reproduction of vegetable life. An absolutely 

 pure seed reproduces its kind, but when cross fertilization has once taken 

 place, the result is uncertain. If the flower of the Baldwin apple tree be 

 fertilized by the pollen of a Winesap, the seed from this union will produce 

 neither the one nor the other. It will be an apple, because both of its parents 

 were apples; but as thej' were of diflerent varieties, or forms, or character, so 

 the produce will have a character of its own, differing from; both of its ances- 

 tors. And even if the stigma of the Baldwin be fertilized by pollen of its own 

 kind, the result is uncertain, because the parent is itself the result of cross-fertili- 

 zation. The api)lication of this principle to the crossing of diflerent races of 

 domestic animals is evident, and we shall have occasion to refer to it here- 

 after. 



But, notwithstanding the uniformity of which we have spoken, in the 

 produce of absolutely pure or unmixed races, there arises occasionally what 



