IN-BREEDING. 43 



stock and concentrate or intensify the peculiar excellences or qualities 

 which give the chief value to his breed or families of animals sought 

 to be produced. By such a process, improvements are real and 

 substantial, and a gain of one quality is not a loss of another. 

 ■ It is' irrational and unphilosophical to say that we can in-breed to 

 the extent of a certain number of crosses and then must outcross 

 a certain and fixed number by way of counteracting the injurious 

 effect of the first attempt. It is as unwise to say twice in and once 

 out, as once in and twice out. 



It is best to follow the true maxim, that each return to the same 

 blood is deleterious and to be avoided, if the same good qualities 

 can be secured by a union with a blood that is similar in the good 

 qualities sought and free from the taint or imperfection that must 

 exist in the source last di-awn from. 



The converse of the maxim is also as safe, and may be expressed 

 thus, — that it is a positive loss to go away or depart from the good 

 qualities sought or desired, and thus to weaken and impair their force, 

 if such departure is not rendered necessary by the impurity of the 

 source from whence your supply has been drawn, to such an extent as 

 to create more loss in health and vigor by again drawing therefrom, 

 than by the introduction of new supplies elsewhere found. Hence, it 

 is always safe and desirable to draw new supplies from such source, if 

 the same can be found, as will both re-enforce the bodilv or nervous 

 Angor or health of the animal, and at the same time reinvigorate or 

 add to the accumulated force of the given qualities sought to be per- 

 petuated and intensified. 



Before proceeding to the practical application of these principles 

 to the breeding of our trotting horses, I insert here a slip taken from 

 the same lecture of an eminent divine before adverted to, as fol- 

 lows: 



The intermarriage of highly gifted relatives tends to diminish rather tUan 

 to increase the ability of the race. 



Neibuhr says that aristocracies, when obliged to recruit their numbers 

 among themselves, fall into decay, and often into insanity, dementia and 

 imbecility. Who does not know that this truth might be illustrated by vast 

 ranges of historical knowledge, were there time here for the presentation of 

 details ? The Lagidaj and Seleucidte for ten hundred years intermarried, and 

 through nine htmdred years were in a process of mysterious decay. "Who 

 cloes not know that it was the feeling of Many of our revolutionary fatliers 

 that half the thrones of Europe were filled by persons more or less erratic on 

 «,ccount of descending from relatives ? It was one of the propositions of Jef- 



