216 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



minority. What Sir Charles Lyell says with reference 

 to man is wholly or nearly wholly true of cattle also : 

 " It is an acknowledged fact that the colour and features 

 of the negro or European are entirely lost in the fourth 

 generation, provided that no fresh infusion of one or 

 other of the two races takes place." The new blood is 

 bred out. 



On the other hand, the advantages of an occasional 

 cross in a closely inter-bred herd cannot be doubted. 

 The old worn-out blood is renewed and re-invigorated. 

 I am indeed the last who would wish to lessen the im- 

 portance of Bakewell's grand discoveries, and I am well 

 aware that to produce and retain uniformity of type, 

 character, and colour in cattle, you must have consan- 

 guinity. But this, like every other hobby, may be 

 ridden too hard; which is indeed the case when men 

 maintain, as did Culley, that a herd of perhaps fifty may 

 go on, without injury, breeding inter se alone for several 

 hundred years. Had he lived till the present time, he 

 would have found that within fifty or sixty years after 

 Bakewell's death it had been abundantly proved that in 

 the case of Bakewell's own Improved Long-horns and 

 New Leicesters the principle of breeding in-and-in from 

 one herd or flock only without admixture had proved a 

 most signal failure, and caused those breeders, who 

 followed Bakewell to the extreme extent which Culley 

 advocated, to get their stock, as his friends, the old 

 farmers, said they would, " tender, diminutive, and liable 

 to disorders!' 



On the whole, I think we may come to the 

 conclusion that, so far as presumptive evidence goes, this 

 grand herd of wild cattle by no means contradicts, but 

 rather confirms, the principle which my late lamented 



