SHORT-HORINT BREEDERS^ ASSOCIATION. 297 



uot red. All these ideas have led to much notorietjs and some of them tc 

 the making of a deal of money; but none of them necessarily to the breed- 

 ing of right down good, useful beasts. 



'•Suppose a man wants to raise a sire which more or less is intended 

 to produce beef cattle. The animal must have a heavy, well fleshed body 

 on short legs, a fine bone, a tendency to make the best of all the food 

 he eats, and, beyond everything else, a stout, hardy constitution. This 

 tendency to make the best of all it eats, combined with a hearty consti- 

 tution, is the great point. No straightness of back, roundness of rib, 

 length of quarter, well filled neck vein, genei'al 'smothness' or redness 

 of color will make up for the want of a good constitution and the capacity 

 to make much beef or milk out of a little food. When an aninial com- 

 bines this constitution with this tendency we may safely say that it is of 

 a good sort, even if it may happen to be somewhat unsymmetrical. No 

 man need look for lasting success unless he breeds from such a sort. 



"The power of judging of this goodness of sort in a strange animal 

 is not given to many men, though by experience and care most men may 

 learn to avoid the worst kinds, and close observation will soon tell every 

 one which are the good and bad sorts jn his own herds. A certain want 

 of symmetry need not affect the goodness of the sort, but no man cat 

 afford to breed vmsymmetrical animals, and no one is likely to try, for, 

 though this prejudice or that whim has led many a man to breed bad 

 sorts, every one sees the need to do what he can to keep up the desirable 

 points in the general outline of the animal. In estimating the relative 

 value of the various points of form a prudent man will set a high value on 

 such as indicate a sound and vigorous constitution. Hence the old- 

 fashioned sneer about kitchen beef will not prevent the very highest con- 

 sideration for a well-developed fore end and wide chest. 



"The great question with most breeders is, How are we to use the 

 mass of facts which is boimd up in our herd books? Are we to go in for 

 line breeding? Must every successive sire be of the same tribe? Or are 

 we, while generally standing by some line of blood, to allow ourselves 

 such liberty as we can find within these limits, or are we to give our 

 judgment free play and take a good beast when we can find one? As a 

 matter of theory, the latter plan is no doubt the most defensible, but in 

 practice it has serious drawbacks. If our judgment was sufficiently well 

 informed it might no doubt be right, but that is not often the case. In 

 the second generation an animal has four grandparents, in the third eight, 

 in the fourth sixteen, and in the fifth thirty-two. Everyone will admit 

 that even in the fifth generation the individual qualities of each of the 

 thirty-two ancestors has much to do with the qualities of its descendants. 

 But how many breeders are likely to know the individual qualities of 

 thirty-two animals living some twenty-five or thirty years ago? Hence, a 

 good sire bred from a sire and dam has often proved a snare, not because 

 nature works untruly or because like does not produce like, but because 



