THE BREEDER'S CORNER-STONE. 37 



We see, then, that we must consider sire and 

 dam equally as factors in the product we desire 

 to obtain, and that each must be regarded as 

 eminently likely to reproduce in the offspring 

 not merely their form and nature in a general 

 way, but that they will even stamp their image 

 on the young animal in many smaller matters 

 of detail. It would appear as if the animal 

 were blocked out in the rough by a general 

 union of the two natures and finished in all 

 those elements which give individuality by a 

 somewhat promiscuous borrowing of the details 

 of feature and character of now one and now 

 the other parent. It seems promiscuous and 

 unordered because the laws which govern the 

 methods of God's great laws that control these 

 things are as yet unrevealed to us. 



Let me borrow an illustration of how this in- 

 termingling would seem to be done from a new 

 application of an old art composite photog- 

 raphy. The photographer takes upon his sen- 

 sitive plate the portrait of a man, immediately 

 upon this is superimposed that of another per- 

 son, and so on indefinitely. In the end a picture 

 is obtained in which those lines are very strong 

 that occurred in every face, and each line is 

 weaker in proportion to the number of faces 

 which lacked it; and so on till the lines which 

 occurred in only one face are faint and hazy, 

 and float like a mellow mist about the picture 



