732 
Abortion in Cattle. 
ditions forced Us to accept the fact that in Nature everything tends to the benefit 
of the strong and the extinction of the weak. The sentence is, Fall out of 
" correspondence with your environment," and die ; " if life is worth havins;, 
fight for it." The outcome of this stern system is perfection of organisation 
and perfect life. On the other side of the picture we saw the animal under 
the ban of civilisation, having nothing to fight about — no life worth speak- 
ing of to struggle for ; compelled to take the food provided for it, with as 
much fresh air as might be thought good for it ; " cabined, cribbed, con- 
fined " — a meat-making and manure-forming machine ; " a tub with a hole 
in the bottom " (these are the very words of a practical breeder and feeder 
of stock) — " a tub with a hole in the bottom," which must be filled up by 
pouring into it quickly, because " the quicker you pour in, the less the 
waste." 
As to the results of this system, the words of a well-known 
stock-breeder, referring to what he called " baby beef," may 
be quoted with the account of the butcher who slaughtered the 
animals themselves : — 
Remarkably ripe, handsome carcasses of beef from bullocks under twenty 
months old ; lamb sold as mutton at seven and ten months old, of which the 
butcher writes : " Never, during my experience of over forty years, have I 
had any sheep equal to them in weight, quality, and flesh at their age." 
Another quotation from Animal Life on the Farm may be 
given in illustration of the effects of breeding from animals so 
reared : — 
Scientists are well aware that the most certain way to secure the 
development of any artificial instinct or quality is to breed from parents in 
which the instinct or quality is apparent. " Like produces like " is the prac- 
tical breeder s sure maxim. Professor Huxley, on the side of science, expands 
the maxim in these words, to which we shall have to refer more than once be- 
fore we finish the subject : " The one end to which, in all living beings, the 
formative impulse is tending — the one scheme which the Archieus of the 
old speculators strives to carry out — seems to be to mould the offspring into 
the likeness of the parent. It is the first great law of reproduction that 
the oflTspring tends to resemble its parent or parents more than anything 
else" — i.e. resemble them in structure and functions — in good or bad 
qualities — in excellences or defects. And, with the meaning fully grasped, 
this sentence is an epitome of the science and art of breeding. 
In regard to the second point, the cow which does not hold 
to service is an animal in which the recurrence of oestrum is 
accepted as proof that impregnation has not taken place. It is 
at least very doubtful if this view is the correct one. The bull is 
known perhaps as a sure stock-getter ; in which case is it not 
fair to suspect that the service has been effective each time, and 
that the impregnated ovum has been prematurely expelled 
(aborted), and that the cow has the susceptibility which leads 
to abortion, and will transmit that tendency to her offspring, if 
at length she becomes pregnant and brings forth a living calf? 
Passing on to the consideration of the evidence wliich 
veterinary authorities have collected on the subject of abortion, 
