Diseases of Sheep. 



331 



I will add but one more observation. A wise farmer will never 

 confide his flock to the exclusive and unwatched care of his shep- 

 herd^ however clever or trustworthy that servant may be. 



I shall now proceed to a short review of those complaints which 

 are incident to parturition and call for obstetric aid ; and before I 

 enter on this topic, a few general remarks on the subject of breed- 

 ing may not be out of place. 



It has long been a disputed point whether the system of breed- 

 ing in-and-in, or the opposite plan of frequent crossing, is the 

 most certain of maintaining the character of the stock. Mr. 

 Bake well always adopted the first plan, and with success: 

 arguing from nature, there is certainly great reason to believe 

 that, with gregarious animals, it is the proper course ; for that 

 herds of deer and wild cattle, which can only breed in close 

 affinity, maintain their peculiar qualities without degeneracy, is 

 notorious to every naturalist, so long as the pastures over which 

 they range are adequate to their support.* 



Note by Professor Owen. 



* In reference to the important and interesting question of the disad- 

 vantage or otherwise cf the system of breeding in-and-in, I reply, that, 

 in common with most ether physiologists, I regard it as likely — I may say 

 certain— to end in the deterioration of the stock ; that is, if the system he 

 strictly adhered to. One can readily understand that in a good stock — say 

 of sheep— it may be long before the ill effects of the in-and-in system 

 begin to manifest themselves, because such a flock may be compared with 

 the human population of one of the small islands of the Pacific. Here, 

 though the community be small, marriages may take place between cousins 

 removed to the sixth, eighth, or tenth degree: — all indeed of the same stock 

 or race, but of degrees of consanguinity sufficiently remote to obviate the 

 bad consequences of the system of breeding in-and-in understood in a strict 

 sense. I would beg to observe, however, that with regard to those rumi- 

 nants which are perhaps the most gregarious, and at the same time localised 

 in a state of nature, as the deer, a special provision seems to have been 

 made, in the peculiar economy of the growth and shedding of their antlers, 

 to secure the propagation of the greatest part of the herd to the strongest 

 males, when at the period of their greatest perfection. The antlers, as is 

 well known, increase in length and the number of snags, as they are 

 successively reproduced each year, until the hart or buck has attained his 

 primest strength and activity. He is then able to beat off both the younger 

 and the older and heavier males, and to choose his seraglio of does or hinds, 

 which become the mothers of the greater part of the next produce. 



It is thus, I suspect, that the ill-consequences of breeding in-a?id-i?i are 

 in part obviated in the fallow-deer of our parks. With respect to the red- 

 deer in their w^ilder and more extended ranges, the intermixture of the 

 blood of different herds is more likely to take place. I am not aware of 

 any experiment where breeding i?i-and-in has strictly been carried on 

 through many generations ; that is, where a male and female offspring of the 

 same parents, have been put together, bred from, and their progeny in like 

 manner prevented from making other alhauces. This should be done 

 before the system of in-and-in breeding can be decidedly pronounced to be 

 a deteriorating one or not, and then the experiment might be modified, to 



VOL. I. 2 A 



