GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 55 



agent in the hands of a skillful and intelligent 

 person in the formation of a breed, it must be 

 used with the greatest of caution with animals 

 of a uniform type, and that with miscellane- 

 ously-bred stock its evil effects are compara- 

 tively slow in showing themselves. 



Many who have given the subject of breed- 

 ing as a science only a casual investigation 

 who have studied only the methods of a Bake- 

 well, a Colling, a Booth, or a Bates, without 

 taking into account the circumstances under 

 which these methods were practiced have hastily 

 adopted the conclusion that what was success- 

 ful in such hands as theirs must still be correct 

 in practice; that because Bakewell and Colling 

 bred in-and-in to fix a desired type, and by con- 

 tinuing that process for a time succeeded in 

 effecting substantial improvement in their cat- 

 tle and sheep, it must necessarily follow that 

 the surest method of preserving the excellence 

 attained by them is to continue in precisely the 

 same road. Or, to put it rather more mildly, 

 because in the formation of a breed these men 

 experienced little if any damage from the prac- 

 tice of breeding in-and-in to the extent to 

 which they carried it, modern breeders of 

 purely-bred animals can continue to breed in- 

 and-in with impunity! 



There -is no one point upon which practical 

 breeders, as well as scientists, are more per- 



