CROSSING AND CLOSE-INTERBREEDING. 211 



Possibly, it is below the dignity of " a great law 

 of nature," to resolve such trivial details. 



In some cases, there are no such effects as are 

 alleged by Darwin. In the other cases, there is such 

 an infinite variety, in the quantity of the effects, that 

 the mind instinctively spurns such a makeshift of 

 ignorance, as is Darwin's " law of nature," ascribing 

 the good which results from Crossing, to Crossing, 

 per se, and the evils resulting from interbreeding, to 

 interbreeding, per se. 



The objections here urged against his "law of 

 nature," are not mere objections ; they are disproofs. 

 For, the facts, adverted to, are not only left unex- 

 plained by his doctrine, but are wholly subversive 

 of it. 



The confusion, prevailing upon the 'subject, has 

 been only augmented, made worse confounded, by < 

 Darwin's senseless generalization. The subject, too, 

 is one, a correct understanding of which, is absolutely 

 necessary to correct principles of breeding. There is, 

 probably, no necessity, more imperatively felt, than 

 that of a knowledge of the cause of the effects of 

 crossing, and of close-interbreeding. Darwin has 

 committed himself to a general proposition which, a 

 very slight consideration of the facts, should have 

 shown him, to be both unsustainable, and absurd. 

 There are published, at the present time, by the veriest 

 and most unlearned of tyros, in the veterinary art, 

 works on breeding, in which the "law of nature," 

 which Darwin propounds, is contemptuously rejected,' 

 as plainly incompetent to cover the facts; and, in 



