276 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



the stock which he buys comes of fecund fam- 

 ilies. This is not so sure a thing as it would 

 seem to some. It is too common to think of 

 animals as always going on like machines 

 turning out their one calf every year with only 

 rare accidents occurring to reduce this ratio of 

 reproduction. The more highly bred the cat- 

 tle are and the more artificial the conditions in 

 which they are kept the more uncertain and 

 irregular do they become as breeders, without 

 the introduction of any such special disturbing 

 cause as hereditary infecundity. With that 

 reckoned in it is hard to tell how bad the case 

 may become. And this is not by any means 

 confined to the females. The inheritability 

 of infecundity may pass into and along the 

 male line quite as well as by the female, and 

 not only may, but it does do so. This is too 

 rarely taken account of. I should hesitate not 

 a little before using at the head of my herd a 

 bull which was the produce of a shy-breeding 

 dam. That these things are so is the logical 

 and inevitable consequence of the laws of in- 

 heritance already inquired into, and we may 

 generally feel safe in tracing them to their 

 logical conclusion. Some of us are rather 

 afraid of deductions from the best settled of 

 these laws, regarding as we rightly do most 

 questions in breeding to be dependent upon 

 facts of observation and inductions therefrom. 



