308 DADDS VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 



characteristics of the race are just as remarkable as they ever 

 were. The vicious and defective find an early grave, but the 

 u race " remains pure. 



Now, as regards horses and cows, the same is true ; they all had 

 a common origin. The different varieties that now exist are the 

 work of time, circumstances, and the art of man. The famous 

 horses mentioned by Mahomet, in the "Koran," resulted from 

 in-and-in breeding. They have existed and multiplied for three 

 thousand years without the slightest intermixture of foreign blood, 

 and, from the time of Solomon up to the present day, their pedi- 

 gree has been watched and chronicled with great care, so that no 

 doubt exists as regards their consanguinity. Their fine form, 

 splendid action, endurance, spirit, speed, and docility can only be 

 retained by preserving the race pure, and this is an argument in 

 favor of in-and-in breeding. 



No breed can be preserved pure unless the in-and-in system be 

 pursued. Take the Suffolk pig, for example. So long as we put 

 Suffolk to Suffolk we get " pure " Suffolk, and, if proper selections 

 have been made, good Suffolks are the result ; but deviate from 

 direct lineage, and the breed degenerates, for better or worse, as 

 the case may be, and they lose their permanency of type, and cease 

 to become pure bloods. 



' From the brave descend the brave. 



The Suffolks in this country are notorious for a cutaneous disease 

 simulating scrofula, and many suppose that this arises in conse- 

 quence of the in-and-in system of breeding ; but this I think is 

 an error. It results from the evils of domestication, and our 

 want of knowledge in making proper selections. There often is 

 one or more animals in a litter incapacitated, by fault, defect, or 

 debility, to perpetuate the stamina and remarkable points of the 

 breed ; these are to be rejected. If we fail to do so, the next gen- 

 eration, or the next to that, furnish more convincing proof of error, 

 which I contend exists in making "bad" selections, and not in 

 the above system. 



Turn for a moment to the history of the French Merino, and 

 we shall find that Victor Gilbert — a name familiar to Ameri- 

 ca's most successful sheep raisers — practiced no other than the in- 

 and-in system of breeding. A lot of Merinos were sent, in 1786, 

 by the Queen of Spain, to the King of France. The latter, in 



