FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 115 
family having within it all the proper elements of im- 
provement, if it could be done without breeding in- 
and-in too closely. And some persons are quite too 
easily frightened on the latter subject. What can be 
made an evil by being carried too far, has, by much 
talking and writing on the subject, been made an in- 
discriminate bugbear at every stage of its progress. 
It is by no means true that it is either unsafe or im- 
proper to interbreed animals of any degree of re- 
Jationship. If it is, what has saved the Spanish 
cabanas for ages? or to take a specific instance (where 
there is no latitude for conjecturing impossibilities), 
what has kept up, nay, increased the size and vigor 
and improved the form of Ferdinand and Louis 
Fischer’s flock for fifty years, when that flock started 
with one hundred ewes of one family and four rams 
of another family, and these families have since been 
interbred without the adinixture of a drop of fresh 
blood? Mr. Atwood’s sheep present a still stronger 
example. According to his statements, his entire 
flock, now scattered by colonization into nearly all the 
States of the Union, originated from one ewe, and 
neither she nor any of her descendants in his hands 
was interbred with other sheep not descended exclu- 
sively from Col. Humphreys’ flock. Mr. Hammond 
bought a small number of Mr. Atwood’s flock in 
1844, and he has since, he assures me, interbred solely 
between the descendants of those identical sheep. 
Ts it probable that the Creator, who organized all 
animals into either families, flocks or herds, which 
strongly incline to remain together, and implanted in 
none of them but man a disinclination to incest, at 
the same time established a physical law which ren- 
