WHAT IS PURITY OF BREED ? 119 



often to a farm ; that we all kno\y who are in the habit of 

 observing the cattle of this country. But we have not devoted 

 ourselves to the establishment of any specific breed of cattle or 

 horses or sheep, except an improvement of the Spanish merino. 

 We have cattle and horses adapted to our specific purposes. 

 We can, however, go abroad and find the different faimlies, so 

 that, practically, it would seem to be a sufficient rule for us, to 

 trace our animals back to a given imported animal, which 

 started from a good foundation. Everybody knows that the. 

 rule for an English thoroughbred horse is, that the dam shall 

 have been bred straight for thirteen generations. What the 

 rule is for cattle Professor Law can state better than I can. 



Mr. Davis. My question did not relate to the establishment 

 of breeds, but to what we shall regard as pure breeds in milch 

 stock and cattle. 



Professor Law. I feel altogether incompetent to answer the 

 question. Li the case of the English thoroughbred, you have 

 heard what is estimated as really coming up to the standard of 

 a thoroughbred horse. In the case of cattle, the Royal Agricul- 

 tural Society of England have, no doubt, found good reason to 

 adopt the rule which has just been stated. But my .impression 

 is this : that we should find the results very different in the case 

 of different animals, — the cow, the horse, the sheep, the pig, — 

 and even in regard to different families of those animals. Cross- 

 ing with a nondescript animal, we get quit, in four or six gen- 

 erations, of almost all traces of the original inferior strain. By 

 crossing with an animal possessing some marked physical traits, 

 we would by no means get quit of them so readily. So what 

 would apply to one would not apply to all. We saw the ex- 

 treme tenacity of this German ram upon the French merinos, 

 in deteriorating the wool through twenty generations — deteri- 

 orating it by more than one half; and I have no doubt that you 

 want a careful observation as regards the effects of a continued 

 crossing of different breeds, in order to establish a series of 

 rules, rather than one fixed rule to go upon in these cases. 



The President, Dr. Loring. Professor Law has brought us 

 back to the statement I made, that whenever there is a recog- 

 nized breed of cattle, we should endeavor to start from that 

 point, and stick to it in our offers of premiums in our agricul- 

 tural societies. I can conceive of no other way. There is a 



