The age-herald., 1901-05-25
BY A. E. CAFFER

As we remarked a few days ago that violent outcrossing was unwise. so may we now warn the breeders against It's antitheses of deep inbreeding. The prob lem of scientific breeding may be partially solved by a close examination of the hls- tory of the worlds rulers. To preserve animal and even vegetable life in vigor, nature herself has prescribed the fusion of races-as the graft in the vegetable kingdom is the preserver of beauty and grace, marriage in man between parents too closely connected causes individuals to decay. Nature suffers, languishes and degenerates when several generations of the same blood succeed each other, but, on the contrary, becomes revived and in vigorated by the infusion of a new blood element. As a sample of interbreeding in the human race We will take Louis XVI of France-a race of eagles transformed into paroquets. Can it be imagined that Charlemagne, Saint Louis, Philip Angus tus, Henry " or Louis XIV. had the fiabby cheeks, ponderous lips, inexpensive eyes and hesitating step that history as- cribes to that unfortunate king whose weak and irresolute mind carried both him and his lovely Marie Antoinette to the block and deluged France with the blood of her .noblest and best men? No they were men of nerve, blood, life be- heath their royal robes. and were not bastardized by constant transmission in one strain. Heroes who formed dynasties have been succeeded at the end by slug gards, on account of intermarriage Look at Henry III, the last of the Valois, and Gaston, the last of the Medici the Car dinal of York, the last Stuart, and Charles VI. the last Hapsburg. Going back little, we take Louis XIV of France: Henry ". is four times his ancestor. and Marie de Medici is five times his ances- tress. Out of thirty-two ancestors In Louis XV.'s case, six are Barbours, five Medicis. eleven Hapsburgs, three Savois, three Stuarts and Danish princess. The deduction, as 1t applies to animals is: Subject the best horse or dog ou earth to this treatment and in the fourth gen. eration you will have either a pony or a cur. Pedigrees, environments isolations and the laws of heredity as they apply to great horses as well as to the great men of the earth have an all-absorbing inter- est and fascination for us, and we have pursued the subject even to the shadowy and benighted ground on which fame of the Darly Arabian, the Compton Bard, ct i'd omne genus rested.
 An Irish newspaper has just been sup pressed for printing some severely un- kind reflections upon his august majesty King Edward VII, formerly the Prince of Wales While Prince of Wales the newly crowned King was given rather generously to sports, and was, at times, a heavy bettor on the races, a charao- teristic that has permeated the moral and intellectual nature of most of the leading English statesmen for the past century. The King has broken away from his old sporting cronies since he as- cended the throne, which has made him somewhat unpopular in English society circles. This conclusion of the King pre- sents case where environment is in conflict with hereditary instincts. The King inherits his strong love of horses and sportive tendencies from his royal mother, while his new environment is SO severely exclusive as to forbid any in timacy or association with the men and women, whether pedigreed or unpedigreed who plays the races. The King is said to be prematurely old and worn out, but were he the man he was when Victoria was only sixty we would have no hes itation in assuming the prophecy that the forceful law of heredity would assert itself in spite of crown jewels, and courts and thrones. It is as potent in mankind as in horselkind, and in horsekind 1t is all-potent and omnipotent
 That alert and rapid-gaited and pictur- esque snowman and scout, known on two continents as Buffalo Bill" has just ex- plotted his Wild West" in Cincinnati. He has recently gone into the breeding business. He sees in 1t a good finish and windup for a very strenuous, Teddy Roosevelt life. He has 150 head of blooded animals on his Big Horn ranch in Wy oming. The scout says the bicycle is a dead fad. and he will pin his faith to the horse.
 MT. George M. Garth of Bonnie Dean Farm, Courtland, Ala, has taken his stable of horses in training to Baltimore, where he will probably make his first start for the money. He, has very strong stable, probably the best that ever left the south, among them The Maid. 2:05A, who for one season held the worlds rec ord for pacing mares. She is reported in fine shape and satisfactory racing condi- tion He also has Jessie G, one of the very best of her class in the country.
 Erroneous.
 Quoting the opinion of Ed Geers on the form of The Abbott, a turf exchange gravely attributes to the Tennesseean the following statement:
 At the present he only wears two- ounce shoes, but even those are hardly necessary now. I am sure The Abbott will reduce his present mark, and before fall he will trot a mile in two minutes or less"
 The statement, as will be apparent to any one who Is familiar with the rigging of The Abbott, is pure nonsense If, in stead of shoes the words toe weights" had been used. it would have been cor rect. No trotter that ever breathed could trot a mile at top speed with two-ounce shoes. Even if he did not need the weight to balance him, the protection to the hoof would be absolutely necessary. Horses that have been shod from colt hood have not the tough, horny feet &C., quired by wild animals with hoofs un- Tho xzxno xs caSra.,-o1