34 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



the stock-breeder should be most strongly 

 warned against, and the earliest possible mo- 

 ment should be seized for their extinction by 

 slaughtering all the animals in whose veins 

 flows the tainted blood. 



And in these cases not less than in those 

 where some healthy quality is transmitted it is 

 not less usual for the disease or defect to skip 

 a generation, or to pass from one branch to a 

 collateral one in its appearance. Thus it fre- 

 quently occurs in both consumption and lunacy 

 that the alternate generations possess almost 

 entire immunity from the disease; and again, 

 that a father will transmit a disease to his 

 daughtersjbnly in the first generation, but also 

 to his son^ children in the second. Many such 

 irregular appearances are recorded. In some 

 cases the disease seemingly having a co-ordi- 

 nation with a certain temperament or bodily 

 peculiarity, as in one case where the disease, 

 consumption, showed an affinity for a blonde 

 type, while a brunette type about equal in num- 

 ber to the blonde possessed entire immunity. 

 None of these manifestations of irregularity in 

 transmission have ever been reduced to any- 

 thing more than the few general classes which 

 have been indicated. The subtle laws of this 

 department of nature being as yet unknown. 



Thus we see what consideration is to be at- 

 tached to the inheritability of ancestral quali- 



