NATURAL BREEDING. 129 



reason of lliis lies on the surface. No decay, 

 no loss of constitutional vigor having occurred, 

 there is no negative force to be overcome, no 

 evil to be rectified. By careful selection the 

 breed has been kept on the stretch, and gen- 

 eration by generation maintained by correct 

 breeding and feeding up to the highest attain- 

 able standard. A bull of fresh blood put on 

 a herd of cows so bred would not be a new 

 element in. a mass made up of a number of 

 infusions of a single old strain, but every line 

 would stand for blood as fresh as his own. 

 Where cattle are long bred in a single locality, 

 even in the most open way, there is a tendency 

 to assume a local type, and here we have a 

 good opportunity of witnessing the influence 

 of a totally new cross. . Thus an imported bull 

 from England will sometimes infuse into our 

 American stocks the same kind of new life 

 which is aroused in closely-bred stocks by the 

 introduction of a foreign strain. 



I was much struck by a recent observation 

 of this fact by a contemporary writer in En- 

 gland a few months ago. In the course of a 

 discussion of the relative merits of English- 

 bred and American-bred Short-horns he ob- 

 served that in his judgment the American 

 descendants of English stock had not so much 

 deteriorated (as was maintained by another 

 writer) from the ancestral standard as departed 



