BREEDING IN-AND-IN. 119 



animals, give them a marked family uniformity, and give 

 their peculiar excellencies a permanent hereditary character, 

 without in-and-in breeding. Consequently a great majority 

 of the ablest breeders of domestic animals of every description 

 in England — such as Bakewell among long--wooled sheep; 

 Ellman among short-wooled sheep ; the CoUings, Mason, 

 Maynard, Wetherell, Knightly, Bates and the Booths among 

 Short-Horn cattle ; * Price among the Herefords, f and a 

 multitude of others of nearly equal celebrity — have been 

 close in-and-in breeders. The Stud Book abounds in examples 

 of celebrated horses produced by this course of breeding. 

 The same is true of nearly all the improved English varieties 

 of smaller animals, such as pigs, rabbits, fowls, pigeons, etc. 

 But we need not go abroad for examples. The Paular 

 sheep of the Rich family were first crossed in 1842. They 

 were then pre-eminently hardy. No one claims that they 

 have gained either in hardiness or size by the cross. Yet 

 for thirty years preceding that period, they had been bred 

 strictly in-and-in, to say nothing of their previous in-and-in 

 breeding in Spain. Whether and how far the Spaniards aimed 

 to avoid breeding from very close individual relationships I 

 am not informed. I have never learned that they paid any 

 attention to them one way or the other ; and their general 

 course of breeding was certainly in-and-in. Each Cabana, or 

 permanent flock, was kept entirely free from admixture with 



* I quote the following from a note in my Report on Fine-Wool Husbandry, 1863 : 

 "In the first volume of American Short-Horn Herd Book (edited by Lewis F. Allen, 

 Esq.,) are diagrams showing the continuous and close in-aiid-in breeding which pro- 

 duced the bull Comet, by far the most superb and celebrated animal of his day, and 

 which sold, at Charles CoUing's sale for the then unprecedented price of $5,000. Bis 

 pedigree cannot be stated so as to make the extent of the in-and-in breeding, of which 

 he was the result, fully apparent, except to persons familiar with such things, and such 

 persons probably need no information on the subject. But this much all will see the 

 force of: the bull Bolingbroke and the cow Phenix, which were more closely related 

 to each other than half-brother and sister, were coupled and produced the bull 

 Favorite. Favorite was then coupled with his own dam and produced the cow Young 

 Phenix. He was then coupled with his own da/ughter (Young Phenix) and their pro- 

 duce was the world-famed Comet. One of the best breeding cows in Sir C. Knightly's 

 herd (Restless) was the result of still more continuous in-and-in breeding. I will state 

 a part of the pedigree. The bull Favorite was put to his own daughter, and then to 

 his own grand-daughter, and so on to the produce of his produce in regular succession 

 for six generations. The cow which was the result of the sixth inter-hreeding, was 

 then put to the bull Wellington, " deeply inter-bred on the side qf both sire ana dam 

 in tJie blood of favorite, and the produce was the cow Clarissa, an admirable animal 

 and the mother of Restless. Mr. Bates, whose Short-Horns were never excelled (if 

 equaled) in England, put sire to daughter and grand-daughter, son to dam and grand- 

 dam, and brother to sister, indifferently, his rule being ' always to put the best 

 anjmals together, regardless of any aflSnity of blood,' as A. B. Allen informs me he 

 distinctly declared to him, and indeed as his recorded- practice in the Herd Book fully 

 proves." 



t Mr. Price, whose Herefords were the best in England in his day, declared, in an 

 article published in the British Farmer's Magazine, that he had not gone beyond Ms 

 own herd for a bull or a cow for forty years. 



