to age, sex or the object for which they were
intended.

Two of these tables have been appropriated to bearing ewes--one to
those which have borne and nursed males and the other to those which
have borne and brought up females. The abstract results of these two
tables have furnished two remarkable facts.

_First_, The ewes that have produced the female lambs are, on an
average, of a weight superior to those that produced the males; and
they evidently lose more in weight than these last during the suckling
period.

_Second_, The ewes that produce males weigh less, and do not lose in
nursing so much as the others.

If the indications given by these facts come to be confirmed by
experiments sufficiently repeated, two new laws will be placed by the
side of that which Giron de Bazareingues has determined by his
observations and experiments. On the one hand, as, at liberty, or in
the savage state, it is a general rule that the predominance in acts
of generation belongs to the strongest males to the exclusion of the
weak, and as such a predominance is favorable to the procreation of
the male sex, it would follow that the number of males would tend to
surpass incessantly that of the females, amongst whom no want of
energy or power would turn aside from generation, and the species
would find in it a fatal obstacle to its reproduction. But, on the
other hand, if it was true that the strongest females and the best
nurses amongst them produce females rather than males, nature would
thus oppose a contrary law, which would establish the equilibrium, and
by an admirable harmony would secure the perfection and preservation
of the species, by confiding the reproduction of either sex to the
most perfect type of each respectively."

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Philosophical Transactions, 1809.

CHAPTER VII.

IN-AND-IN BREEDING.

It has long been a disputed point whether the system of breeding
_in-and-in_ or the opposite one of frequent crossing has the greater
tendency to maintain or improve the character of stock. The advocates
of both systems are earnest and confident of being in the right. The
truth probably is, as in some other similar disputes, that both are
right and both wrong--to a certain extent, or within certain limits.

The term _in-and-in_ is often very loosely used and is variously
understood; some, and among these several of the best writers, confine
the phrase to the coupling of those of exactly the same blood,