CHAPTER III.
CONSANGUINITY.
Conjugal consanguinity has neither partisans nor friends. The physiologist, physician, priest, and legislator, have always launched against it the same anathema. All, in making war against it, knew that it was the surest method of establishing a fixed and permanent race; but, all, preoccupied in seeking a means of universal fusion, thought they had found in the prohibition of this a leveler destined to equalize everything.
It was feared that certain families would become too individualized, too marked in their tendencies; and all, without acknowledging it, endeavored to close a way which might lead to the engrossment of fortunes.
Close interbreeding, in the horse, has not the same political inconveniences; this is clearly apparent; but with us, the desire to legislate upon and regulate everything, reducing all to a common level, has prevailed. Equine consanguinity has not, any more than the other, found favor.
ANTHONY.
One fact, however, strikes any one at the outset who has studied the equine races, followed, step by step, their progeny, and made himself acquainted with their performances. This fact is:
If a horse is remarkable over all others in one of the three following ways: personal beauty, high qualities, or sureness of reproduction; go back boldly to his origin, and you will find yourself, at each step, face to face with close interbreeding—that is to say, the reforming of a race by means of itself, the result of great qualities increased by drafts made at the source of a generous blood.
The thoroughbred race in England, which has been formed but with a very limited number of primitive agents, and which, consequently, soon became consanguine, has anew, and at two distinct epochs, absorbed in every degree and repeatedly the blood of two famous groups, represented, the first by Byerly Turk, Darley Arabian, and Godolphin Arabian; the second, by Matchem, Herod, and Eclipse. At the present moment, it maintains itself, thanks to a universal consanguinity, and everything good which exists, by going back inevitably to these sole progenitors, now forms but one and the same family. Magnificent results have come from these alliances, and every day it can be proved that this blood has not degenerated.
It is the same in all breeding countries, and it has been shown, (for proofs see the journal “La vie à la campagne”, of the 30th November, 1863), that especially in Merlerault, the nursery of the fine French breeds, everything exceptionally good which exists, or which has existed, is the result of consanguinity—that is, “in-and-in breeding.”
The following is the conclusion of the author of this note:
These examples (the pedigrees of the best horses), collected with care, will perhaps bring upon me the accusation of being a partisan of in-and-in breeding. In principle, I condemn its absolute use; but, within certain limits, I admit and advise it, especially in the commencement, when it becomes a question of founding and establishing a family designed to exercise a permanent influence upon the future improvement of a region.
Uniting together vices of conformation, character, and temperament, is rendering them indelible for ever. Uniting quality, beauty, and aptitude, it is preserving the monopoly of these in a single family.
Hence, I would like, when there appeared, on the turf or elsewhere, one of those envied types of which nature is generally so sparing, that judicious attempts, made with patience, should fix the qualities so apt to disappear, and collect, so to speak, all the sources whence they emanate.
The brothers, sisters, and collaterals, should be included, but once only, in these crossings, which might even go back, if it were still time, as far as the grandsires and dams, on account of the resemblance noticed between ancestors and their grandchildren.
Finally, the truly valuable and completely successful results of a family thus strengthened should be coupled according to the rules of intelligent crossing to the equally confirmed representatives of some other excellent family, fit to form new offspring.