2THlE BREEDING PROBLEM.



lisbed types-but rather that in some respects the offspring resembles the
fattier, in others the mother; in sonic forming a partial or exact mean between
the two; and in still others we find the produce utterly unlike either, giving it
all individuality or character of its own. We might illustrate this by
instances frotm the experience of every breeder, but it is not necessary. The
effect has teen observed by all who have given any attention whatever to the
subject of breeding.
  The foregoing extract is taken from a very able and philosophical
article in the National Lire S   .tt-A .Journal, and as this matter of the
certain transmission of acquired qualities, and the fact that such qual-
itiebs can also be and are acquired andi changed as the result o,
judicious selections and training in the hands of the intelligent breeder
and handler lies at the threshold of the subject of breeding trotting
horses, I have deemed it proper to present my readers here with
various extracts both from the same series and other articles in that and
other journals. It is a subject that is worthy of our most careful eos-
sideration.
  Where animals in a state of nature are not disturbed in the enjoyment of the
conditions under which they have existed for ages, as the American bison, or
buffalo, the elk, the deer, the wolf, etc., the uniformity which prevails among
all the individuals of the race is remarkable; and all the peculiarities of
structure, color and character are transmitted from generation to generation
with almost unerring certainty; and here the maxim of the breeder, that ' like
produces like," scarcely ever meets with an exception. Such animals are,
in the truest sense of the word, thoroughbred, or purely bred. There has
been no commingling of blood, or crossing of various strains, to give the race
a composite character, and hence, when we have seen the sire and da3m, we
can tell with certainty what the progeny will be. Were any of our domesti-
cated animals thoroughbred., in the sense that the bison, the elk or the deer
are thoroughbreds, the breeding problem would be a simple one, and like
would produce like as long as the conditions of life remained the same. The
same principle holds true in the reproduction of segetabte life. An absolutely
pure seed reproduces its kind, but when cross fertilization has once taken
place, the result is uncertain. If the flow-r of the Baldwin apple tree be
fertilized by the pollen of a Winesap, the seed from this union will produce
neither the one nor the other. It will be an apple, because both of tsU parents
were apples; but as they were of different varieties, or forms, or character, so
the produce will have a character of its own, differing from both of its ances-
tors. And even if the stigma of the Baldwin be fertilized by pollen of its own
kind, the result is uncertain, because the parent is itselfthe result of cross-fertili-
zation. The application of this principle to the crossing of different races of
domestic animals is evident, and we shall have occasion to refer to it here-
after.
  But, notwithstanding the uniformity of which we have spoken, in the
produce of absolutely pure or unmixed races, there arises occasionally what



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