SYSTEMS OF BREEDING 625 



grandson, and then breeding the produce together, intensifying such breeding 

 by going back to the grand-dam with the grandchildren, until I had a family. 



In this connection we do not forget that Messenger was 

 three times inbred to Godolphin. 



The following from A. J. Lovejoy, of Roscoe, Illinois, gives 

 his experience in breeding Berkshires. The quality of his stock 

 is indicated by Figs. 50-52, and his reputation as a successful 

 breeder is fairly won by many years of uniform success. He 

 writes as follows : 



We are believers in quite close, even inbreeding. We find the greatest 

 show animals are closely inbred. Sires to half-sisters is the most common 

 form of close breeding, though cousins, nephews, and nieces, and even 

 brothers and sisters are bred together with great success. It of course 

 requires good judgment in mating animals that are particularly strong in 

 individual merit. Should each have a bad defect in any way, we should 

 expect that to be more manifest in the offspring than in the parents, and 

 likewise the good points would be better ; so if one mates equally good 

 specimens the produce will be an improvement. There is no sire of any 

 breed so prepotent as an inbred sire. When we get to the point where we 

 feel the need of outside blood we mate an imported sow with our best boar, 

 and from this litter we select a boar to use on the get of his own sire from 

 other sows in the herd ; that is, we breed this boar on his own half-sisters. 



No man has bred Berkshires more successfully than N. H. 

 Gentry, of Sedalia, Missouri, and no American breeder has been 

 credited with a freer use of inbreeding. This veteran breeder 

 writes as follows : 



My experience in inbreeding is that you do good, or fail, in proportion 

 to the quality in the strain of blood ; that is, that you intensify what you 

 have, let it be good or bad, let it be weak or strong in constitution. The 

 theory advanced by the mass of people, to the effect that you degenerate 

 size and weaken constitution, is all wrong unless the strain you are inbreed- 

 ing lacks size as a rule, or lacks constitution. Animals that have plenty of 

 size and a vigorous constitution can have these traits intensified as certainly 

 as you can lessen these traits by inbreeding with strains lacking these 

 essential traits. If you can intensify the one it seems to me as reasonable 

 that you can the other ; so a man's success in inbreeding will depend upon 

 what he has to inbreed with. Rightly and intelligently done I have never 

 been able to detect any bad results whatever from inbreeding. I inclose 

 you my prize list of two World's Fairs, and it is especially true of my 

 St. Louis winners that every animal was closely inbred. It has always 

 been strange to me that most every person who has never given the subject 



