NATURAL BREEDING. 137 



the readiness with which such generalizations 

 are received as logical and just inferences from 

 the facts, and adopted as safe foundations for 

 practice and experiment. 



These cases are mere samples. It is not from 

 them but from a careful and long-continued 

 observation of the practice of many breeders, 

 as well as my own long and wide experience, 

 that I conclude that they are typical and are 

 representative not merely of a class but of a 

 large class, and that that class, while showing 

 in itself varying degrees, exhibits at the same 

 time a general unity, and is so large and so 

 homogeneous as to almost unavoidably lead us 

 to accept it as the ordinary case and to con- 

 clude that the tendency running through it is 

 the rule ; so that I do not think I am wide of 

 the mark when I say that out of every ten cel- 

 ebrated prize-winners in recent years nine have 

 been miscellaneously bred. 



And it is further to be observed how pre- 

 potency runs with the vigor of the new blood 

 which is introduced by outcrosses. One of the 

 chief claims that have been made for the in- 

 and-iii method is the great influence that in- 

 and-in bred cattle have in their prepotency 

 over other cattle. But I have found that out- 

 bred cattle often show as high a degree of pre- 

 potency as those most deeply inbred. I have 

 already instanced the case of Muscatoon, very 



