122 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



menced in a breed of animals, and no recourse is 

 had to the method which is alone effectual in ar- 

 resting its course— the mixture of pure blood — the 

 degradation will proceed with annually increasing 

 rapidity. The best stock of breeding cattle or 

 horses in the country may be irreparably injured bj 

 the slightest accidental mixture of blood in the least 

 degree impure. The same table that demonstrates 

 the improvement of a breed, when proper care is 

 paid to the breeding, will prove the rapidity with 

 which the same breed must deteriorate when left to 

 the agency of degrading causes. Suppose the cat- 

 tle-breeder has a cow that has reached the purity 

 of blood we have given to the twentieth generation, 

 crossed by a bull of no breeding : at the fourth gen- 

 eration there will be only l-16th part of pure blood 

 remaining ; at the tenth, not a thousandth part ; and 

 at the twentieth, not a millionth part. 



There are many farmers who imagine they have 

 laid the foundation of an improved stock when they 

 have procured a half-breed bull or cow, or perhaps 

 two half breeds to commence with. But these half 

 breeds will not in the next generation produce stock 

 like themselves, no matter how nearly the parents 

 may resemble each other. The progeny will re- 

 semble the remote ancestors on one side or the 

 other, as the original blood happens to predominate ; 

 and, instead of having, as he hoped, a new race of 

 his own, the farmer will find he is possessed of sev- 

 eral races, only resembling each other in the general 

 fact that they get rapidly lower in the scale of ex- 

 cellence in each generation. The reasons for this 

 result have been assigned above. A continual re- 

 currence to pure blood can alone give certainty to 

 improvement. 



In breeding, somewhat conflicting opinions are 

 entertained as to the relative size of the male and 

 female ; some breeders contending that in all cases 

 the female should be the largest, as affording moro 



