l62 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



if I may use the phrase. I do not think it is very far wrong. 

 I came down here from Minnesota, more than a thousand miles, 

 to talk to you, farmers, about the subject of animal breeding. 

 I want to tell you right here, lest you should be disappointed, 

 that I did not come to tell you anything that you do not know. 

 You may say that is strange. You may say, " You come a 

 thousand miles to. tell us what we know already ? " Right. 

 Let me ask you — did you go to church last Sunday? What 

 did you go for? Did you go with the idea that the man who 

 stood up and faced you and talked to you about the higher 

 things of life was to tell you something new? No, you did 

 not go for that purpose at all. You just went for the pur- 

 pose of keeping in remembrance and refreshing your memory 

 upon what you did know. I came to New England, not in the 

 hope of telling you anything new, but with the hope of putting 

 your memory in such a condition about some of these things 

 that you will go out and try to do some of the things I be- 

 lieve you should. I shall look upon my mission as a failure 

 if these things which I shall now attempt to give you on the 

 subject of animal breeding are not of value. I would like to 

 know, fellow-farmers, how many times you have listened to 

 this kind of discussion from the institute platform. I do not 

 know whether you discuss the question of animal breeding 

 much in New England or not, but I do know that they do not 

 talk about it very much from the platform in the West. I 

 sometimes think it is because of the complexity of the question. 

 In some respects the art of breeding is like a great hole in 

 which an intellectual giant may sink a thousand fathoms and 

 more at the very first plunge. In other respects it is a broad 

 shallow, in which a child intellectually may wade without 

 any difficulty. In some respects the operation of its laws is 

 so regular and plastic that the skilled breeder may almost 

 mold and fashion at will. In other respects they are so er- 

 ratic and subtle as to confound the most skillful, the results 

 are so different from what he expected. The great dififerences 

 thus resulting in some instances from even skillful breeding 

 are doubtless the outcome of laws that are apparently antago- 

 nistic, but not really so. They are only apparently so because 

 they are not yet sufficiently understood. It may be that they 

 never will be, but, happily for the breeder, the results from the 

 proper application of principles, that are now well understood, 



ifc. 



