114 PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 



ful results, should be gentle rather than violent ; that is, 

 never couple animals possessing marked dissimilarity, 

 but endeavor to remedy faults and to effect improve- 

 ment by gradual approaches. Harmony of structure 

 and a proper balancing of desirable characteristics, " an 

 equilibrium of good qualities,'' as it has been happily 

 expressed, can be secured only in this way. 



It may not be out of place here to say, that much 

 of the talk about blood in animals, especially horses, is 

 sheer nonsense. When a ''blood horse" is spoken of, 

 it means, so far as it means any thing, that his pedigree 

 can be traced to Arabian or Barbary origin, and so is 

 possessed of the peculiar type of structure and great 

 nervous energy which usually attaches to ''thorough- 

 bred" horses. When a bull, or cow, or sheep is said 

 to be of "pure blood," it means simply that the animal 

 is of some distinct variety — that it has been bred from 

 an ancestry all of which were marked by the same 

 peculiarities and characteristics. 



So long as the term "blood" is used to convey the 

 idea of definite hereditary qualities it may not be objec- 

 tionable. We frequently use expressions which are 

 not strictly accurate, as when we speak of the sun's 

 rising and setting, and so long as every body knows 

 that we refer to apparent position and not to any mo- 

 tion of the sun, no false ideas are conveyed. But to 



