Appendix II 193 



and, in the absence of replies, scepticism, if not disbelief, 

 may be held reasonable. 



There is an explanation, however. Forty years ago I made 

 acquaintance with a fact which impressed me by its significant 

 implications ; and has, for this reason I suppose, remained in my 

 memory. It is set forth in the Journal of the Royal Agricul- 

 tural Society, vol. xiv. (1853), pp. 214 et seq., and concerns 

 certain results of crossing English and French breeds of sheep. 

 The writer of the translated paper, M. Malingie-Nouel, Director 

 of the Agricultural School of La Charmoise, states that when 

 the French breeds of sheep (in which were included "the 

 mongrel Merinos ") were crossed with an English breed, " the 

 lambs present the following results. Most of them resemble the 

 mother more than the father ; some show no trace of the father." 

 Joining the admission respecting the mongrels with the facts 

 subsequently stated, it is tolerably clear that the cases in which 

 the lambs bore no traces of the father were cases in which the 

 mother was of pure breed. Speaking of the results of these 

 crossings in the second generation " having seventy-five per cent, 

 of English blood," M. Nouel says : — " The lambs thrive, wear 

 a beautiful appearance, and complete the joy of the breeder. . . . 

 No sooner are the lambs weaned than their strength, their 

 vigour, and their beauty begin to decay. ... At last the con- 

 stitution gives way ... he remains stunted for life " : the 

 constitution being thus proved unstable or unadapted to the 

 requirements. How, then, did M. Nouel succeed in obtaining 

 a desirable combination of a fine English breed with the rela- 

 tively poor French breeds ? 



He took an animal from " flocks originally sprung from a mixture of 

 the two distinct races that are established in these two provinces 

 [Berry and La Sologne]," and these he "united with animals of another 

 mixed breed . . . which blended the Tourangelle and native Merino 

 blood of" La Beauce and Touraine, and obtained a mixture of all four 

 races " without decided character, without fixity, . . . but possessing the 

 advantage of being used to our climate and management." 



Putting one of these "mixed-blood ewes to a pure New-Kent ram 

 . . . one obtains a lamb containing fifty-hundred ths of the purest and 

 most ancient English blood, with twelve and a-half hundredths of four 

 different French races, which are individually lost in the preponderance 

 of English blood, and disappear almost entirely, leaving the improving 



O 



