INBREEDING. 97 



limit line has never been determined, and in- 

 deed can never be, for much depends on the 

 vigor and vitality of the stocks used. It is 

 well recognized that a breed with fresh blood, 

 unpolluted by the evils so commonly resulting 

 from the unnatural, artificial life of a domestic 

 condition, will stand in-and-in breeding better 

 and give more valuable results from such a 

 system than a breed long domesticated and 

 with a system impaired by long continuance 

 under artificial conditions of life. The decay 

 consequent upon such in-and-in breeding at- 

 tacks first of all, in most cases, the generative 

 organs, producing reduced fecundity, infertility, 

 impotency, tendency to abortion, etc. These 

 disorders are accompanied or followed by 

 organic troubles affecting the animal in those 

 organs which for any reason are weakest, most 

 frequently appearing as pulmonary and tuber- 

 culous diseases, scrofula in all its 'many forms, 

 ophthalmia, etc. The first appearance of these 

 symptoms is not a danger signal. The danger 

 was long ago; the damage is already done. 

 Such forms of disease are strongly prepotent, 

 and will linger long in the decayed stock upon 

 which they have been engrafted. 



Among human beings we are all familiar 

 with the divine law which forbids incestuous 

 marriages, and with the fact that this law has 

 been engrafted into most human codes, and 



