60 





BREEDING POINTERS & SETTERS. 



This subject has been already noticed under the head Setter, 

 as well as under that of Pointer, but in what may be called the 

 outline only : it will therefore be necessary, in this place, to 

 descend to those particulars, without which, I should regard the 

 present volume as incomplete. 



In the first place, I would wish it to be fully impressed upon 

 the mind of the sportsman, that, whenever, by judicious crosses 

 or otherwise, he has obtained a breed of first-rate excellence, 

 he must, nevertheless, in order to preserve such excellence, call 

 in the assistance of other breeds of repute ; since, if he confine 

 the propagation to the same family, the strain will degenerate, 

 and in the third or fourth generation become literally good for 

 nothing. Relationship should be as much as possible avoided 

 in breeding, nor can any better plan be adopted than procuring 

 either the dog or bitch from a distant part of the country. 

 Thus by crossing the Norfolk and the Yorkshire blood, the 

 two best greyhounds (Snowball and Major) ever known, were 

 produced. 



The ill consequences of breeding in and in, to use a sports- 

 man's phrase, are now tolerably well known, and the remark is 

 not confined to dogs only, but would seem to apply equally per- 

 haps to the whole circle of nature. The judicious farmer, aware 

 of the evil, spares neither expense nor pains in crossing his 

 horses, cows, and sheep ; his pigs and poultry. Even the hu- 

 man species, by the intermarriages of families strikingly exempli- 

 fies these observations degeneracy of mind as of body is thus 



