Even with the Gamecock, pedigrees of famous strains were formerly kept, and extended back for a century. With pigs, the Yorkshire and Cumberland breeders "preserve and print pedigrees;" and to show how such highly-bred animals are valued, I may mention that Mr. Brown, who won all the first prizes for small breeds at Birmingham in 1850, sold a young sow and boar of his breed to Lord Ducie for 43 guineas; the sow alone was afterwards sold to the Rev. F. Thursby for 65 guineas; who writes, "She paid me very well, having sold her produce for 300 pounds, and having now four breeding sows from her." (12/3. For greyhounds see Low 'Domestic Animals of the British Islands' 1845 page 721. For game-fowls see 'The Poultry Book' by Mr. Tegetmeier 1866 page 123. For pigs see Mr. Sidney's edition of 'Youatt on the Pig' 1860 pages 11, 22.) Hard cash paid down, over and over again, is an excellent test of inherited superiority. In fact, the whole art of breeding, from which such great results have been attained during the present century, depends on the inheritance of each small detail of structure. But inheritance is not certain; for if it were, the breeder's art (12/4. 'The Stud Farm' by Cecil page 39.) would be reduced to a certainty, and there would be little scope left for that wonderful skill and perseverance shown by the men who have left an enduring monument of their success in the present state of our domesticated animals.
It is hardly possible, within a moderate compass, to impress on the mind of those who have not attended to the subject, the full conviction of the force of inheritance which is slowly acquired by rearing animals, by studying the many treatises which have been published on the various domestic animals, and by conversing with breeders. I will select a few facts of the kind, which, as far as I can judge, have most influenced my own mind. With man and the domestic animals, certain peculiarities have appeared in an individual, at rare intervals, or only once or twice in the history of the world, but have reappeared in several of the children and grandchildren. Thus Lambert, "the porcupine-man," whose skin was thickly covered with warty projections, which were periodically moulted, had all his six children and two grandsons similarly affected. (12/5. 'Philosophical Transactions' 1755 page 23. I have seen only second-hand accounts of the two grandsons. Mr. Sedgwick, in a paper to which I shall hereafter often refer, states that FOUR generations were affected, and in each the males alone.) The face and body being covered with long hair, accompanied by deficient teeth (to which I shall hereafter refer), occurred in three successive generations in a Siamese family; but this case is not unique, as a woman (12/6. Barbara Van Beck, figured, as I am informed by the Rev. W.D. Fox, in Woodburn's 'Gallery of Rare Portraits' 1816 volume 2) with a completely hairy face who was exhibited in London in 1663, and another instance has recently occurred. Colonel Hallam (12/7. 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' 1833 page 16.) has described a race of two-legged pigs, "the hinder extremities being entirely wanting;" and this deficiency was transmitted through three generations. In fact, all races presenting any remarkable peculiarity, such as solid-hoofed swine, Mauchamp sheep, niata cattle, etc., are instances of the long-continued inheritance of rare deviations of structure.
When we reflect that certain extraordinary peculiarities have thus appeared in a single individual out of many millions, all exposed in the same country to the same general conditions of life, and, again, that the same extraordinary peculiarity has sometimes appeared in individuals living under widely different conditions of life, we are driven to conclude that such peculiarities are not directly due to the action of the surrounding conditions, but to unknown laws acting on the organisation or constitution of the individual;--that their production stands in hardly closer relation to the conditions of life than does life itself.