BREEDING IN-AND-IN. 123 



With such notaHe instances of successful in-and-in breeders 

 as I have given, and with the hundreds that might be added 

 to the list, it is equally true that the instances of those who 

 have failed have been vastly more numerous. When the 

 masterly hand of Bakewell no longer guided his improved 

 Leicesters, but a very small number among all the prominent 

 breeders of them were found able to preserve them without 

 some admixture of fresh blood. When not ruined entirely, 

 they became delicate and inclined to sterility. And so the 

 pinnacle of success is often but one step from the final over- 

 throw. In view of all the facts, therefore, the great majority 

 of sheep farmers, who do not make breeding a study and an 

 art, had better continue to avoid anything like close in-and-in 

 breeding — though there is no occasion for those exaggerated 

 fears which many entertain on the subject, in respect to 

 remote relatives, where the animals to be coupled a^e 

 obviously robust and well formed. 



Some persons believe that the dangers of in-and-iu breed- 

 ing are less between animals of pure blood than between 

 mongrels or grade animals.* I can see no reason for this, 

 if the latter are equally perfect in that structural organization 

 on which health depends. 



* See Goodale on the Frinciples of Breeding. 



