92 MICHIGAN ACADKMV OF SCIENCE. 



ANIMAL HUSBANDRY WORK— ITS VALUE AS AN EDUCA 



TIONAL FACTOR. 



J, J. FERGUSON. 



Into almost every field of human study there has crept during recent 

 years the demand that that particular field shall, within reasonable limits, 

 be made subservient in larger measure to the principles which have been 

 the key-note of the wonderful progress which marked the closing decade 

 of the nineteenth century. Utility is the measure not alone of the 

 scientific discoveries of the day, but of many of those systems of educa- 

 tion which in past years men were content to regard as mental calis- 

 thenics which patiently followed would ultimately reward the student 

 with a strong and vigorous mentality. Man's life is not of sufficient 

 length to accomplish all his ambitions, so he asks us to eliminate from 

 the period of action those factors which may later remain passive. At 

 times we feel that this utilitarian motive is carrrying us too far out and 

 beyond that sphere where men have been wont to live and think for the 

 mere love of learning. From the pregnant storied classics to the pure 

 sciences the transition was slow but none the less sure. Pure science is not 

 enough, so today men are demanding that their science shall come in the 

 form of science applied to the problems of a world essentially commercial 

 in its thought and action. 



In presenting the following thoughts to you I realize fully that the use 

 of the special line of applied science with which this paper deals might 

 be claimed to lie alone with that division of the student body who in after 

 life would have a commercial interest in its detailed application. Having 

 had but a limited experience in its pursuit we may be in error in the 

 belief that it carries within its limits a definite value to every student 

 who would inquire into the working of natural law in a commei-cial 

 world and who would, beyond this, know something of animal life, the 

 laws and conditions affecting its perpetuation and further evolution into 

 more highly perfected types. 



When we speak of definite work in Animal Husbandry we limit it in 

 time to less than a quarter of a century while it is more than a century 

 since isolated workers undertook improvement with 'definite species, it 

 has been during quite recent j'ears that the classification of acquired 

 knowledge has been undertaken. The field is large, little moi-e than the 

 first sod has been turned. Since our technical work in this line has to 

 pass the censorship of the commercial mart the following facts may be of 

 interest. In the L^nited States domestic animals having a commercial 

 value number over 140. (KM). 000 head with a value of three billions of dol 

 lars. On parade they would make a solid column of more than 76 abreast 

 reaching from San Francisco to Boston, or if in single file a solid pro- 

 cession that would reach six times around the earth and require twenty- 

 one years to pass a given point mar<'hing steadily at the rate of twenty 

 miles a day. They would fill a solid stock train of 2,600,000 modern 

 palace cars over 20,000 miles in length; and further their value exceeds 

 the total combined value of all the corn, wheat, and other cereals, pota- 



