The practice of _crossing_, like that of close breeding, has its strong and its weak side. Judiciously practised, it offers a means of providing animals _for the butcher_, often superior to, and more profitable than, those of any pure breed. It is also admissible as the foundation of a systematic and well-considered attempt to establish a new breed. But when crossing is practised injudiciously and indiscriminately, and especially when so done for the purpose of procuring _breeding animals_, it is scarcely less objectionable than careless in-and-in breeding. [Illustration: A SPRIGHTLY YOUTH.] The profitable style of breeding for the great majority of farmers to adopt, is neither to cross nor to breed from close affinities--except in rare instances, and for some specific and clearly understood purpose--but to _breed in the line_; that is, to select the breed or race best adapted to fulfil the requirement demanded, whether it be for the dairy, for labor, or for such combination of these as can be had without too great a sacrifice of the principal requisite, and then to procure a _pure-bred_ male of the kind determined upon, and breed him to the females of the herd; and if these be not such as are calculated to develop his qualities, endeavor by purchase or exchange to procure such as will. Let the progeny of these be bred to another _pure-bred_ male of the same breed, but as distantly related to the first as may be. Let this plan be faithfully pursued, and, although we cannot, without the intervention of well-bred females, procure stock purely of the kind desired, yet in several generations--if proper care be given to the selection of males, that each one be such as to retain and improve upon the points gained by his predecessor--the stock, for most practical purposes, will be as good as if thorough-bred. If this plan were generally adopted, and a system of letting or exchanging males established, the cost might be brought within the means of most persons, and the advantages which would accrue would be almost beyond belief. A brief summing-up of the foregoing principles may not be inappropriate here. The law of similarity teaches us to select animals for breeding which possess the desired forms and qualities in the greatest perfection and best combination. Regard should be had, not only to the more obvious characteristics, but also to such hereditary traits and tendencies as may be hidden from cursory observation and demand careful and thorough investigation. From the hereditary nature of all characteristics, whether good or bad, we learn the importance of having all desirable qualities _thoroughly inbred_; or, in other words, so firmly in each generation that the next is warrantably certain to present nothing worse--that no ill results follow from breeding back to some inferior ancestor--that all undesirable traits or points be, so far as possible, _bred-out_.