view raw text
RIGHT AND WRONG METHODS OF MATING I hear a lot of talk nowadays about eugenics and the law of heredity What is tin law of heredity anyhow asked the prominent club mem ¬ ber of the president Very simple replied I he president the law of heredity is that all undesirable traits come from the other parent The moral of this witty retort may be applied to Hie attitude of all antagonistic factious but in perhaps no other sphere is there such an aptitude always to blame the other side as among blond stock breeders There are few producers who when a mare misses or breeds a bad foal would not blame the stallion and vice versa there are still too many breeders who when their stallions after a numlicr of disappointing seasons are no longer patronized declare that they did not get the right sort of mares In particular cases of failure either of the two parties the owner of the mare or the owner of the stallion may reasonably put the blame on the other side but once tlii principle is generally applied the world at large derives very Httle if any enlightenment of a practical value from such disputes disputesNature Nature in all her creations forbore from letting the world mankind boast and plant bo governed by a monistic principle and philosophers have in vain applied their wit to an attempt to solve the problem whv and for the sake of which mundane institutions there is twofoldness in everything that is to siy two opposite and Independently existing principles which go to form and t deter ¬ mine everything Yet not one member of the mod erate school of philosopher attained by his doc ¬ trines any more than did that old sect of Man iflioans wlio made the oxistance of two external principles of being their creed and religion It was left to a madman to declare that the world can no longer be guided by such principles as that of Might is right According to Niotxche might is right and by this pronuiiclamcnto lie meant to convey that the twofodnoss in everything which has delivered the world from an eternal rule of superior brute and which would not have given to the fittest any earthly chance to survive Is a principle which could only have been accepted by the primitive thinkers of ancient times or by the alchemists of the Middle Ages However tlio civilized world will never heed any pleading which purports to show that Nature and Fate can lie made instrumental to the will of mankind mankindFor For my part I do not believe that any of our contemporaries will discover ineins by which we shall be able to gain some mastery over this myster ¬ ious working of Nature aiid in particular some knowledge as to the influence of sex upon the determination of individual properties But any such attempt as those made by Bruce Lowe who by tiie ascribing a dominant influence to the female element did in fact nothing else but blame the other side are bound to remove us farther from the goal of our aspirations Some people seem to believe that in devoting so much labor to a demonstration of the dominant Influence of the sire element I hm guided by the desire of pro ¬ curing for myself a strong reserve for m crusade against the Figure System 1 contemplate nothing of this soit quite ou the contrary 1 shall before long be able to prove why if applied in a manner entirely different from Bruce Lowes ideas the figures may servo a useful purpose In their present style of application they are misleading to a regrettable degree for there is no biological tenable theory that nay support the idea of a consistent influence of the bloodi in tailfemale aiul this chiefly because practically nothing is known of the breeding of the original females as op ¬ posed by pretty reliable records referring t the origin and breeding of those sires which rendered such obvious assistance in the building up of the female lines linesIn In the stono age of race horse breeding com ¬ munications between studs suffered through the primitive means of conve nice and one only needs to study the first volume of the Stud Book lo perceive to what remarkable extent these local conditions told upon the evolutions of the race horse The fact that old breeders like Hutton Croft Cnrweii Pelham Lord Darcy and Lecdes laid the foundation of their famous studs by a judicial use of particular sire blood is firmly im ¬ pressed upon any unbiased mind To all indica ¬ tions they did not keep a big stud of blood mares and send these in the spring all over the country countryThe The great majority of mares weio only rented for one season The healthy principle of choos ¬ ing the right sort of mare for an approved stallion instead of relying blindly on the suitability of an approved sire to1 any sort of mare lias put the breeding of the race horse on that sound foot ¬ ing from which it raised itself to the loftiest heights witliin a remarkably short time Bruce Lowe labored under the impression that the above mentioned old breeders had liy some means picked out fifty mares of particularly good breeding pro ¬ pensities and according to his contention these would have founded lit lines in cooperation with any kind of stallion But just the reverse is the case Great sires like Jigg Partner Brimmer Bay Bolton Careless Old Spot Spanker Snake Bald Galloway Cliilders and soforth were the factors determining the establishment of the various successful female linos as can lie proved by the simple fact that those original females in whoso pedigrees these sires do not appear failed to found lines lit enough to survive surviveIt It certainly would lie foolish to assert that the wellbred mares of later generations did not play an equally important part in the evolution of the race horse to that of the successful sires In fact it can easily be demonstrated that some ¬ times the influence of the mare was almost para ¬ mount but there is no denying that the best re ¬ sults in breeding were obtained when the mare fucceeded in transmitting supreme sire blood of equal efficiency in heredity to that of her partner The 135 Derliys from 1780 to 1914 were only ten times won by colts whose sires and maternal grand sires were both classic winners and it is certainly not a matter of mere coincidence that the four colts of Ihe last fifty years thus broil were Don caster Galopin Bend Or and Ormonde and of these both Bend Ors nnd Ormondes sires and ma ¬ ternal grandsires secured the Blue Riband Twelve of the Derby winners of the last fifty years were sous of classic winners as were the maternal graudsires of ton other winners winnersThus Thus the breeding of about fifty per cent of the Derby winners of the last fifty years is closely connected with the classic records of the stronger sex Neither sire nor maternal grandsirc of the following twentyfive colts has won a classic race Kettledrum Caractacus Macaroni Gladiatetir Pre ¬ tender Favonius Crcmorne Kisher Sefton St Cation Harvester Melton Merry Hampton Common Ladas Persimmon Galtee More Jcddnh Diamond Jubilee Volodyovski Ard Patrick Spear ¬ mint Minoru Sunstar and Aboyenr I think we had bettor eliminate Persimmon and Diamond Tnbi loe from this category for their sire St Simon would surely have proved one of the easiest Derby winners of modern times timesIf If then we leave out Sunstar which has not yet asserted his sire qualities Galtee Afore and Ard Patrick which were expatriated ere they had done any stud duty at home wo have about twenty colts left in this class and amongst them we find all those which proved such dismal fail ¬ ures at the stud The above may serve to show that in certain cares of failures of stallions owners of mares had a weighty cause to blame the other side for here is to all indications no mare able to breed a Derby winner with any pretensions of becoming a great sire which is not herself by a classic winner or descends in tailmale lineage in first or second generation from such Bou langor in London Sporting Life
