NATURAL BREEDING. 



WE now come to what I call "natural breed- 

 ing." I have so called it for want of a more ac- 

 curate term wherewith to describe it. It has 

 been called by some "outcrossing," by others 

 "mixed breeding"; but both of these terms are 

 far too narrow and inadequate for us to adopt. 

 By natural breeding I mean breeding with the 

 sole object of securing the best possible offspring. 

 Outcrossing and mixed breeding alike fetter 

 us to the idea of families and blood lines. We 

 can only outcross when we have a family line 

 to supply the "in" of which the "out " is the 

 opposite idea. So we can only "mix" when we 

 have some definite quantities to mix, as fam- 

 ilies, etc. In both of these terms an accident 

 of the method pursued has been confounded 

 with the essence and a name has resulted 

 which is at once a misnomer and misleading. 



The great central idea of the theory of nat- 

 ural breeding is that of selection a selection 

 akin to natural selection, whose outcome is the 

 survival of the fittest, but akin to it in just the 

 same way that instinct is akin to reason. Na- 

 ture tends to preserve an average; so natural 

 selection in all normal cases tends to maintain 



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