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BREEDING FARM STOCK. 
cs This inattention to breed is not, however, of so much 
consequence in the people as in the rulers — in those to whom 
the destinies of nations are intrusted, on whose qualities and 
actions depend the present and future happiness of millions. 
Here, unfortunately, the evil is at its height; laws, customs, 
prejudices, pride, bigotry, confine them to intermarriages 
with each other, and thus degradation of race is added to all 
the pernicious influences inseparable from such exalted sta- 
tions. What result should we expect if a breeder of horses 
or dogs were restricted in his choice to some ten or twenty 
families taken at random ? if he could not step out of this 
little circle to select finely-formed or high-spirited individuals, 
how long a time would elapse before the fatal effects of this 
in-breeding would be conspicuous in the degeneracy of the 
descendants ? The strongest illustration of these principles will 
he found in the present state of many royal houses in Europe : 
the evil must be progressive, if the same course of proceeding 
be continued.” 
I shall cite a single example to prove what will, to most 
persons, seem unnecessary, namely, that mental defects are 
propagated as well as corporeal. 
6i We know/’ says Haller, cc a very remarkable instance of 
two noble females, who got husbands on account of their 
wealth, although they were nearly idiots, and from whom this 
mental defect has extended for a century into several families, 
so that some of all their descendants still continue idiots in 
the fourth, and even in the fifth generation.” 
Thus do the lectures of Mr. Lawrance bear out my pub- 
lished observations, — that the weakness of nerve and mal- 
formations arise from a too close affinity of blood. A few 
years ago, when 1 was in Wiltshire, in the course of con- 
versation with some sheep breeders there, on the cause 
of silly sheep (“ podderish, or water-headed”), they remarked 
that breeders in that part were well satisfied that it was 
caused by breeding in too close relationship. 
It is a false notion that some farmers have, that the giddy 
sheep is caused by peculiar food, or that it is a worm in the 
head. The disease of flounder in the liver is not created by 
peculiar food, but it is hereditary, the germ of life being 
brought into active vitality from peculiar damp air and food. 
Mr. Lawrance says, in the 6th chap., that in-breeding 
will bring into activity peculiar diseases in pigs and other 
animals . — “ The domestic sow produces young twice a-year ; 
the wild animal only once. The former frequently brings forth 
monstrous foetuses, which are unknown in the latter. Our 
pigs, too, are invaded by a new kind of hydatids, dispersed 
