"[54]
These precise statements, by one of the greatest authorities on our
domesticated animals, are sufficient to show that the fact of
infertility or degeneracy appearing in the offspring of hybrids after a
few generations need not be imputed to the fact of the first parents
being distinct species, since exactly the same phenomena appear when
individuals of the same species are bred under similar adverse
conditions. But in almost all the experiments that have hitherto been
made in crossing distinct species, no care has been taken to avoid close
interbreeding by securing several hybrids from quite distinct stocks to
start with, and by having two or more sets of experiments carried on at
once, so that crosses between the hybrids produced may be occasionally
made. Till this is done no experiments, such as those hitherto tried,
can be held to prove that hybrids are in all cases infertile _inter se_.
It has, however, been denied by Mr. A.H. Huth, in his interesting work
on _The Marriage of Near Kin_, that any amount of breeding in-and-in is
in itself hurtful; and he quotes the evidence of numerous breeders whose
choicest stocks have always been so bred, as well as cases like the
Porto Santo rabbits, the goats of Juan Fernandez, and other cases in
which animals allowed to run wild have increased prodigiously and
continued in perfect health and vigour, although all derived from a
single pair.
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