268 BREEDING. 



marriages, while we find them constantly going on among brutes, 

 and especially, as above remarked, among gregarious animals. 

 Hence it should not lead us to reason by analogy from one to the 

 other, nor because we find that first cousins among our own race 

 are apt to produce defective children, bodily and mentally, should 

 we conclude that the same evil results will occur when we breed 

 from dogs or horses having the same degree of relationship to 

 their mates. At the same time, when all that can be desired is 

 obtainable without in-breeding, I should be .inclined to avoid it; 

 always taking care to resort to it when it is desired to recover a 

 particular strain, which is becoming merged in some other pre- 

 dominant blood. Then by obtaining an animal bred as purely as 

 possible to the desired strain, and putting him or her to your own, 

 it may be expected that the produce will " go back " to this parti- 

 cular ancestry, and will resemble them more than any other. 



BEST TIME OF YEAR. 



The best time of the year for breeding dogs is from April to Sep- 

 tember, inasmuch as in the cold of winter the puppies are apt 

 to become chilled, whereby their growth is stopped, and some 

 disease very often developed. Among public greyhounds there is 

 a particular reason for selecting an earlier period of the year, 

 because as their age is reckoned from the i st of January, and as 

 they are wanted to run as saplings or puppies, which are defined 

 by their age, the earlier they are born the more chance they have 

 in competition with their fellows of the same year. Hounds and 

 game dogs are wanted to begin work in the autumn, and as they 

 do not come to maturity till after they are a year old, they should 

 be whelped in the spring. This is more especially the case with 

 pointers and setters, which are then old enough to have their 



