THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 179 



The natural laws which apply to the increase of the stock 

 upon the farm are comprehended under the general term of 

 the principles of breeding. Every farmer has observed marked 

 peculiarities in his animals. Some of them fatten readily, for 

 example, and pay by their rapid increase of weight for all the 

 food they consume, while others do not. Some cows in the 

 dairy pay richly by their abundant yield, or by the high quality 

 of their product for the cost of keeping with the addition of an 

 abundant profit, while others fall below this point and actually 

 entail a loss upon the owner. There is a want of uniformity, a 

 great difference in the intrinsic value, and the object of the 

 intelligent breeder is to search out the rules which govern the 

 results he seeks to obtain, and to ascertain what system he can 

 adopt to make sure of attaining such results. Experience has 

 6hown that the same fixed or natural laws apply uniformly to 

 all classes of stock, as horses, cattle, sheep, swine, <fec, but there 

 is always more or less difficulty in their application in practice, 

 from the imperfect knowledge we have of the peculiarities of 

 individual animals. 



The old maxim that " like produces like," is liable to be mis- 

 applied, and the error will appear in certain contradictory results 

 which we find from time to time iii the course of our experience. 

 This arises in part from the fact that certain qualities are latent 

 or hidden and do not appear to the eye. In order to breed with 

 certainty, it is essential that the qualities we desire to obtain 

 should be inherent in both parents. If the two animals possess 

 opposing or unlike qualities the characteristics of the offspring 

 will follow the one which possesses the strongest hereditary 

 power, or the strongest power of transmitting its peculiarities, 

 the greatest unity of influence and fixity of type. 



If both parents possess a like character and fixity of type the 

 result will be a character similar to that of the parents, but 

 in a more distinctly marked degree. Two animals possessing 

 this strong similarity of characteristics will not only perpetuate 

 their corresponding peculiarities, but intensify them in their 

 offspring, and each successive generation which they produce 

 receives an increase of hereditary force or power of transmitting 

 its own peculiarities. But this power invariably diminishes if 

 the parents instead of possessing this likeness of character really 

 possess opposite or antagonistic characteristics. We cannot 



