IN-AND-IN BREEDING. 269 



will be able to adopt on the particular farm on which he 

 may be located. It is not therefore a simple, biitt a compound 

 question. It is not merely which breed will make most flesh 

 and fat, but which will make it in the shortest time and on 

 the least food ; which can bear the weather, or hard keep, 

 or travelling, or a particular mode of management, with the 

 greatest impunity. All these considerations must enter into 

 the farmer's mind before he can come to a sound conclusion. 

 From the want of making these considerations many fatal 

 mistakes have been made, and a flock has been selected al- 

 together unsuitable to the soil, and incapable of bearing the 

 severity of the weather." 



IN-AND-IN BREEDING. 



No point connected with breeding has elicited so much 

 controversy, and much of it certainly of a random character, 

 as the one we are about to consider. There are grounds, to 

 a certain extent, both for an affirmative and negative of the 

 question ; and therefore, the writer, with due deference to 

 divided opinion, will present some of the views and argu- 

 ments entertained and advanced on either side, which will 

 enable the reader to draw his own conclusions from the 

 premises. 



By breeding in and in is properly meant choosing indi- 

 viduals to breed from of the same family between which 

 exist propinquity or relationship of blood. The objects 

 sought to be accomplished by breeding in and in, are to 

 strengthen good qualities and get rid of bad ones as soon as 

 possible ; it is therefore very evident that it requires a mas- 

 ter's skill in selection of individuals, for if any possess im- 

 perfections, these, however slight at first, become hereditary, 

 and will go on assuming a worse and worse type till the 

 breed become worthless. Mr. Cully, the eminent sheep 

 breeder, entertained the opinion, that less risk was run by 

 breeding in and in than is generally supposed ; yet at the 

 same time was slyly procuring his rams from Mr. Bakevvell, 

 and selling his own at high prices to others. 



Blacklock contends that breeding in and in is as " destruc- 

 tive to flocks, as marriages of near relations to the human 

 kind. We would not Avitness an every-day entailment of 

 diseases, if people would forego their unnatural love of 

 money, and cease their endeavors to keep it in ' the family,' 

 by forming matrimonial alliances with those who are near of 

 23* 



