104 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



remaining t^vo, tliougli born with well-formed feet, afterwards 

 fell victims to founder and were mined. 



Bony growths on tlie limbs (splints, spavins, ringbones, side- 

 bones) are so frequently hereditary that a rule may l)e laid down 

 to that effect. This is often due to faulty conformation, as 

 want of breadth, bulk and strength of the joints, upright pas- 

 terns causing jarring and concussion, or to faulty direction of 

 the limbs and feet, natural or acquired, but in some cases it 

 appears due to an inherent constitutional tendency to bone dis- 

 ease, rheumatic or otherwise. Rheumatism in cattle and sheep 

 is notoriously hereditary, and it is to be regretted that the taint 

 is shown in some of our very best families. 



Heaves (broken wind) tends to be hereditary from want of 

 chest capacity or a gluttonous appetite, as well as from a trans- 

 mitted proclivity. Roaring is often liereditary from the badly 

 set on head or want of breadtli between the lower jaw as well 

 as from a constitutional tendency. An instance is on record of 

 a stallion which got sound stock, till he contracted roaring at ten 

 years old, and nearly all his stock, got after this date, became 

 roarers at the same age. 



To recount all the maladies which may be transmitted would 

 be to enumerate nearly all the diseases which flesh is heir to, 

 but chief among tliese as most likely to be inherited, arc those 

 with a distinct though perhaps latent constitutional taint, and 

 to this class belong rheumatism, consumption, scrofula, specific 

 ophtlialmia, and diseases of the l)ones and joints. It is rarely 

 advisable to breed from any animal suffering at the time from 

 any active disease, but tliose points would be valuable indeed 

 which should persuade us to breed from an animal in whose 

 person or family the tendency to any of tiie class of specific 

 constitutional diseases named has been strongly manifested. 



As to the mode of transmission it is perhaps idle to offer an 

 opinion. We know tliat the germs of the futnre being, ovum 

 and spermatozoa, have in tliem the elements capable of develop- 

 ing into elaborate organisms similar in nearly all points to their 

 ancestors, and it is no more nor less difficult to conceive of the 

 reproduction from these elements of size, shape, color, func- 

 tional powers of secretion, nutrition, &c., than of tiie disease to 

 which the ancestors were sultject. Whether as Darwin sup- 

 poses the original germs are composed of myriads of infinites!- 



