IN-BREEDING-OUT-CROSSING.



description or another, of The Drone, Sleight of Hand, Van
Amburgh, Legerdemain, Flateatcher, and Phryne, but no doubt
can be entertained as to the incomparably higher value of the
two last, produced within moderate relationship, than of the
other four, the offsprings of close in-breeding.
  All these investigations and comparisons seem to jnoint, I
should say, to the fact that in-breeding in mares, even if once
or twice repeated, need not render us absolutely distrustful as
to their value at the stud; that, however, on the whole, the
mating of the best individuals within the chosen families, mod-
erately related, is preferable for the production of brood mares
as well as stallions, because such mating within the same strains
of blood may, as occasion requires, be repeated without danger,
as no apprehension of thereby weakening the constitution need
be entertained.
  It is evident, however, that the observance of this principle,
if continued ad infinitum, also is not without danger to the
lasting prosperity of the breed, for the more frequently the
mating of animals, standing to one another in even a mod-
erate decree of kin only, is resorted to, the more will gradually
become the in-breeding in the whole species of thoroughbreds,
necessitating, at perhaps a not far distant period, the infusion
of new blood by occasionally importing into England sires of
pre-eminence from other countries.
  Experience points to America as the source from which to
draw in future the regenerating fluid; for although the Amer-
ican thoroughbred takes its origin from England, and is still,
more or less, related to its English prototype, the exterior am
pearance and the more recently shown superiority of American
horses lead to the conclusion that the evidently favorable cli-
mate and the, to a great extent, virgin soil of America-in
every respect different from ours-gradually restore the whole
nature of the horse to its pristine vigor, and make the American
race appear eminently qualified to exercise an invigorating in-
fluence on the constitution of the thoroughbred in the mother
country, enfeebled, perhaps, by oft repeated in-breeding.



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