40 PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 



The bestowal of food suflScient both in amount and 

 quality to enable animals to develop all the excellencies 

 inherent in them, and to obtain all the profit to be 

 derived from them, is something very distinct from 

 undue forcing or pampering. This process may pro- 

 duce wonderful animals to look at, but neither useful 

 nor profitable ones, and there is danger of thus pro- 

 ducing a most undesirable variation, for, as in plants, 

 we find that forcing, pampering, high culture or what- 

 ever else it may be called, may be carried so far as to 

 result in the production of double flowers, (an unnat- 

 ural development,) and these accompanied with greater 

 or less inability to perfect seed, so in animals, the same 

 process may be carried far enough to produce sterility. 

 Instances are not wanting, and particularly among the 

 more recent improved Short-horns, of impotency among 

 the males and of barrenness in the females, and in some 

 cases where they have borne calves they have failed to 

 secrete milk for their nourishment.* Impotency in 

 bulls of various breeds has not unfrequently occurred 

 from too high feeding, and especially if connected with 

 lack of sufficient exercise. ■\ 



* See Rowley's Prize Report on Farming in Derbyshire, in Journal 

 of Royal Agricultural Society, Vol. 14. 



t A working bull, though perhaps not so pleasing to the eye as a 

 fat one, (for fat sometimes covers a multitude of defects,) i3«,&urcr 



