No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. ' 479 



you ever think what a combination of mental and physic al qualities 

 are concerned in writing? Reflect that these qualities were trans- 

 mitted to the son all wrapped up in a cell so small as to require a 

 microscopeto see the cell. It may be doubted whether any one with 

 the highest power of the microscope can be said to have seen the 

 vital principle which is responsible for these manifestations. Since 

 in plants, pedigrees and performance-records of ancestors — a thing 

 much to be desired — have not been kept, special examples of the 

 tremendous force of heredity is best found in the breeding of domes- 

 tic animals. There is not, and there probably never has been, a 

 running horse of consequence that does not trace back to Herod, 

 Eclipse, and Matchem, which in turn trace back to Byerly Turk, 

 Darley Arabian, and Godolphin Barb. Almost without exception, 

 at the present day, standard-bred trotters with any speed trace 

 either to Hamiltonian Ten or Membrino Chief, and a large propor- 

 tion of the best trace to one son of Hamiltonian Ten. The best 

 Percheron horses trace to Jean le Blanc, lineal descendant of Arabian 

 Gallipolis; the French Coach to Young Rattler, descendant of the 

 thoroughbred Matchem; the hackneys to Scott Shales (692); the 

 Cleveland Bays to either Dart. (83), Barley Harvest (447), or the Hob 

 Horse (316); Gaited Saddle Horses to Denmark; Clydesdales to 

 Prince of Wales (073) and Darnley, both related. Says Wallace, a 

 well known English writer: ''It may be safely asserted that nearly 

 all the celebrated Shorthorns which have become famous within 

 the period of which there is any w^ritten history of the breed have 

 been descended more or less directly from a few famous bulls, nota- 

 bly Hubbock (calved about 1775) the Father of Shorthorns, and his 

 much inbred descendants. Favourite (252) and Comet (155)." If this 

 is true, the breeding of animals and of plants is not a lottery. Men 

 reap what they sow, be it horses, cattle, corn, w^heat, cheat or wild 

 oats. 



The Character of Heredity : This seems almost magical; but is it? 

 Or is the hereditary transmission of characters a simple life phenom- 

 enon? Heredity has been defined as the overgrowth of the indi- 

 vidual. Take a one-celled plant, a bacterium. Its mode of repro- 

 duction is to divide in the middle. Then there are two. Which 

 father? Which son? Which mother? Which daughter? Which 

 is to exercise parental control? Are you surprised that these twins 

 were like the parent? What else could they be like? Why did this 

 parent divide and become twins? Why not grow to the size of a 

 football or even the earth? Because, as it grew its surface in- 

 creased as the square of its dimensions, and its volume increased 

 as the cube of its dimensions. Since it grew in volume faster than 

 its feeding surface the time came when it could no longer support 

 itself. This is remedied by becoming smaller. What difference 

 between a one-celled plant and a corn plant, a horse or man. Sim- 

 ply that in these higher organisms there is a division of labor simi- 

 lar to that in the industrial w'orld. Certain cells only are concerned 

 in the reproductive processes while the majority of cells serve to 

 protect them. These protecting cells grow old and die, but the re- 

 productive cells of the higher organisms, like the one-celled organ- 

 ism, rejuvenate or make young the individual, while the body returns 

 to the earth from whence it came. "Dust thou art, and unto dust 



