CROSSING AND OLOSE-INTERBBEEDrNG. 203 



Its pedigree, and that of its descendants, are frequently- 

 quoted. Another equally remarkable case, is that of 



" The famous bull, Favorite (who was himself the 

 offspring of a half brother and sister from Foljambe"), 

 which " was matched with his own daughter, grand- 

 daughter, and great-granddaughter ; so that the produce 

 of this last union, or the great-granddaughter, had 

 fifteen-sixteenths, or 93.75 per cent, of the blood of 

 Favorite, in her veins. This cow was matched with 

 the bull Wellington, having 62.5 per cent, of Favorite 

 blood in his veins, and produced Clarissa : Clarissa 

 was matched with the bull Lancaster, having 68.75 P er 

 cent, of the same blood, and she yielded valuable off- 

 spring " (Darwin's Animals and Plants, &c, Vol. ii, p. 

 146). 



These instances, they hold, show conclusively, that 

 evil effects do not result from close-interbreeding, or 

 from marriages of consanguinity ; that, there is some- 

 thing wrong, or suspicious,- about the cases, implying 

 that evil does follow; and, that, to sum up the whole 

 question, the prohibition against marriages of near v 

 relations, is but another device of priestcraft to hold 

 the ignorant in bondage. 



The further these schools advance their accumu- 

 lations of facts, the worse confounded, seemingly, 

 grows the problem; and, the cream of the joke lies in 

 this, that each side taunts the other, with the imputa- 

 tion, that those of the other school have no practical 

 knowledge of the subject, or they would not deny, what 

 is established by the experience of all breeders. The 

 retort to this, by either, is, the confrontation, of their 

 opponents, with facts, respectively, showing no evil, 



