BEST TIME OF YEAR. 247 
gregarious wild animals resorting to in-breeding in all cases, the 
stag adding his daughters to his harem as long as he has strength 
enough to beat off his younger rivals. In the same way the bull 
and the stallion fight for supremacy, till at length, from age or 
accident, they are beaten off, and a younger and more vigorous 
animal mastérs them and their female attendants. Yet this seems 
Nature’s mode of insuring a superior stock, and preventing the 
degeneration which we see take place among human beings, when 
a feeble pair take upon themselves the task of producing a family. 
It would appear that man is an exception to the general rule, for 
there is a special revelation prohibiting inter-marriages, while we 
find them constantly going on among brutes, and especially, as 
above remarked, among gregarious animals. Hence it should not 
lead us to reason by analogy from one to the other; nor because 
we find that first cousins among our own race are apt to produce 
defective children, bodily and mentaliy, should we conclude that 
the same evil results will occur when we breed from dogs or horses 
having the same degree of relationship to their mates. At the 
same time, when all that can be desired is obtainable without in- 
breeding, I should be inclined to avoid it; always taking care to 
resort to it when it is desired to recover a particular strain, which 
is becoming merged in some other predominant blood. Then by 
obtaining an animal bred as purely as possible to the desired 
strain, and putting him or her to your own, it may be expected 
that the produce will “go back” to this particular ancestry, and 
will resemble them more than any other. 
BEST TIME OF YEAR. 
The best time of the year for breeding dogs is from April to Sep- 
tember, inasmuch as in the cold of winter the puppies are apt to 
become chilled, whereby their growth is stopped, and some disease 
very often developed. Among public greyhounds there is a par- 
ticular reason for selecting an earlier period of the year, because, 
as their age is reckoned from the 1st of January, and as they are 
wanted to run as saplings or puppies, which are defined by their 
age, the earlier they are born the more chance they have in com- 
petition with their fellows of the same year. Hounds and game- 
