ON BREEDING. 217 



"'Stonehenge,' speaking of breeding race horses, says, 'that 

 by referring to distinguished animals, it will be found that the 

 proportion of in-bred and crossed horses is about equal.' But 

 of those that he calls in-bred, I have found none that were the 

 produce of nearer connection than first cousins. The instances 

 you cite of the old in-and-in breeders, do not, in my opinion, 

 prove their success. I deny that they have, in the aggregate, 

 bred more good animals than others who have not so bred. 

 From the in-and-in families they have had less calves, and more 

 bad ones than other breeders of less intelligence, who did not 

 follow in their track. 



"The assumption that occasional animals produced by such 

 close in-and-in breeding as some have practiced, and which were 

 really highly meritorious, and sold for enormous prices, (thereby 

 establishing distinct families of cattle,) is a false one, as compared 

 with other animals not so incestuously bred, although descended 

 originally from the very same animals. This, I say, is against 

 reason, as well as against experience of the great mass of practi- 

 cal breeders. 



"I do not say that we should never breed in-and-in. I agree 

 that it would be better to breed to a good animal closely related 

 to our stock, than to breed to a poor one that was not so related ; 

 and I agree that many instances can be cited where no bad 

 results have followed, where they have not been carried too far. 

 But I deny that in any case, such close breeding has been more 

 beneficial than the breeding together of animals of the same 

 blood and quality that were not akin.* Occasionally, by such 

 close connection, an extraordinary animal is produced, but such 



* Judge Jones is a breeder of short-horn cattle. If he will tax his memory, or 

 refer back to the early good short-horn families in the first volume of the English 

 Herd Book, he will find that all those of superior excellence, trace their pedigrees 

 into the herds of but a limited number of breeders, from which have descended, by 

 continuous interchanging crosses, the best blood and animals of the present day.— 

 L. F. A. 



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