The practice of crossing, like that of close breeding, has its strong and its weak side. Substantial arguments can be brought both in its favor and against it. Judiciously practiced, it offers a means of procuring 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. Such attempts, however, as they necessarily involve considerable expense, and efforts continued during a long term of years, will be rarely made. But when crossing is practiced injudiciously and indiscriminately, and especially when so done for the purpose of procuring _breeding animals_, it cannot be too severely censured, and is scarcely less objectionable than careless in-and-in breeding. The following remarks, from the pen of W.C. Spooner, V.S., are introduced as sound and reliable, and as comprising nearly all which need be said on the subject of crossing breeds possessing distinctive characteristics: "Crossing is generally understood to refer to the alliance of animals of different breeds, such as between a thorough-bred and a half-bred among horses or a South Down and Leicester among sheep. Now the advantages or disadvantages of this system depend entirely on the object we have in view, whether merely to beget an animal for the butcher, or for the purpose of perpetuating the species. If the latter is the object, then crossing should be adopted gradually and with care, and by no means between distant or antagonistic qualities, as for example a thorough-bred and a cart-horse. The result of the latter connection is generally an ill-assorted and unfavorable animal, too heavy perhaps for one purpose, and too light for another. If we wish to instil more activity into the cart-horse breed, it is better to do so by means of some half-bred animal, whilst the latter can be improved by means of the three-parts-bred horse and this again by the thorough-bred. There is a remarkable tendency, in breeding, for both good qualities and bad to disappear for one or two generations, and to reappear in the second and third; thus an animal often resembles the grand dam more than the dam. This peculiarity is itself an objection to the practice of crossing, as it tends to prevent uniformity and to encourage contrarieties; and thus we find in many flocks and herds that the hopes of the breeders have been entirely baffled and a race of mongrels established.