FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 117 
require a special and local set of circumstances to 
bring their benevolent effects into operation. 
Interbreeding between near relatives becomes fatal 
to physical imperfection; but the drift of testimony 
goes to show that it is innocuous to perfection.* 
* A majority of the most celebrated breeders and improvers of 
English cattle have been close in-and-in breeders, such as Bakewell, 
the founder of the improved long-horn or New Leicester cattle, Price, 
“the most successful Hereford cattle breeder on record watil twenty 
years ago,” the Collins, Mason, Maynard, Wetherill, Sir Charles 
Knightly, Bates, the Booths, &c, &c., breeders of Short-Horns. In 
the first volume American Short-Horn [Herd Book (edited by Lewis F. 
Allen, Esq.}, are diagrams showing the continuous and close in-and-in 
breeding which produced the bull Comet, by far the most superb and 
celebrated animal of his day, and which sold at Charles Colling’s sale, 
for the then unprecedented price of $5,000. His pedigree cannot be 
stated so as to make the extent of the in-and-in breeding, of which he 
was the result, fully apparent except to persons familiar with such 
things, and such persons probably need no information on the subject. 
But this much all will see the force of: the bull Bolingbroke and tho 
cow Phenix, which were more closely related to each other than half 
brother and sister, were coupled and produced the bull Favorite. Fa- 
vorite was then coupled with his own dam and produced the cow 
Young Phenix. He was then coupled with his own daughter (Young 
Phoenix) and their produce was the world-famed Comet. One of tho 
best breeding cows in Sir Charles Knightly’s herd (Restless) was the 
result of still more continuous in-and-in breeding. I will state a part 
of the pedigree. The bull Favorite was put to his own daughter, and 
then to his own grand-daughter, and so on to the produce of his produce 
an requiar succession for siz generations. The cow which was the re- 
sult of the sixth interbreeding, was then put to the bull Wellington, 
“deeply interbred on the side of both sire and dam in the blood of 
Favorite,’ and the produce was the cow Clarissa, an admirable animal 
and the mother of Restless. Mr. Bates, whose Short-Horns were 
never excelled (if equalled) in England, put sire to daughter and grand- 
daughter, son to dam and grand-dam, and brother to sister, indiffer- 
ently, his rule being “always to put the best animals together, 
regardless of any affinity of blood,” as A. B. Allen informs me he dis- 
tinctly declared to h m, and indeed as his recorded practice in the Herd 
