INHERITANCE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2118, 7 December 1880, Page 4

INHERITANCE.

[“ Prairie Farmer.”] There are certain principles or laws of nature which have great influence on the reproduction of animals, but which are not always taken into account by breeders, and seldom given their foil credit. It is one of the first laws of nature that like produces like, or the offspring resembles its parents, and though this can be largely controlled by selection and conditions of life brought to bear on the animals by man, still it can not be entirely overcome, and oftentimes not as much so as is desired. In spits of all the forces we can bring to bear upon her, nature holds her sway, though variously modified by them. The first law of nature is known as inheritance, by which we mean the transmission of characters, both physical and mental, from the parent to its offspring. There are various theories as to the part each parent plays in this inheritance, but all of them are varied according to circumstances. Few breeders pay much attention to the inheritance of internal characteristics, but from my own observation these seem to be more marked by transmission through a number of generations than is external form.

I knew of a gray mare with several marked charactoristios which she transmitted very regularly to the sixth generation, though the sire each time was of entirely different breeding and character. With the exception of one branch this whole family (which is now very numerous), never produced any other color than gray or sorrel. The gray varied from dark to light, but invariably got fleabitten in old age, and the sorrels were light, there being but one ohesnut, and she waa tho only branch of the original family that had a bay oolt. The old mare was a notably fast walker, having walked fifteen miles under the saddle for a wager in two hours and a half, and her stock is far above an average in this respect. They are all high spirited and free workers, and were never known to balk. It is a very rare thing for a oolt to throw itself while being broken or to break a halter, and though naturally afraid of the whip, they will all fight if whipped much. All these characters have been alasost universally transmitted to a large number of horses where a different sire was used nearly every year, and while tho outward form varied somewhat according to the sire the internal charaoteristios remained the same.

Strangers often remark, on looking at a large herd of cattle, that they do not see how the owner can tell his calves apart, so many of them look alike. But the owner, if he is at all observing, will have no trouble in recognising a resemblance between the calf and its mother in some way, before the calf is grown. At one time there were several red heifers in one herd very much alike, and I asked if Blush’s heifer was not missing, and went through the herd carefully to look for her. As the cattle walked on my father suddenly called out “ Yonder she goes ! I can tell her by her walk. She moves exactly like Blush.” Though this heifer did not so closely resemble her mother in form, she had precisely the same walk ; and I doubt if there was an animal in the whole herd that did not have some characteristic in common with its mother.

I remember a very peculiar and marked case of recognition of a transmitted character A blacksmith was shoeing a horse that he had never seen before, and after paring the fore feet and fitting the shoes, asked, "Is this horse a Tnckahoe ?” “Yee,” wae the reply. “He is a son of old Tuokahoe.” “I have shod old ‘ Tuck ’ many a time,” soid he, “ and there is the exact counterpart of his forefoot.” This horse did not strikingly resemble his sire in outward appearance, and seemed to have the disposition of his dam ; still, hero was a very marked case of inheritance, or the baoksmith, who shod many feet a day, would not have noticed it. Animals sometimes inherit characters from more remote ancestors than immediate sire and dam. This is called atavism or reversion, These qualities, inherited from remote ancestors, must have been posessed in a latent condition by all the descendants to the present generation, when they have become visible. Until wo learn how to control inheritance more than wo do at present we must not expect to get animals just to our liking ; for, though the immediate ancestors may suit us very well, as we cannot control and keep latent the now occult characters, we must not expect the offspring to exactly resemble either parent, or be an exact intermediate between the two. If we made a close study of inheritance among our animals, I think we would see many characters which would not be .noticed at first sight, and which, as they become more prominent in after years, we would account for by atavism, when in reality they had been present all the time.