LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 375 



which is beautiful as well as useful. Better food is produced, and better 

 methods of feeding used. 



The improved breeds have mostly been made by taking the best stock at 

 hand, and by selection for breeding with care and good management, a con- 

 stant improvement has been made, until many breeds have nearly reached 

 perfection in special qualities. Forming a breed in this way requires geaius, 

 skill, enterprise, and much patience, to accomplish perfect work. The best 

 breeders are born to the work. In the early stages of improvement with 

 most breeds, what we would call excessive in-breeding, was resorted to for the 

 purpose of refining and fixing a character permanently, and on this rock 

 many later breeders have been wrecked, because they have not sufficiently 

 understood the animal economy or lacked the skill to intelligently direct. 



I have often heard breeders remark that as Bakewell and Colling, Bates 

 and Hammond improved by in-breeding it will also aid them, and they pursue 

 it regardless of any fixed object to the ruin of their herds. In forming a 

 breed, in-breeding is useful and helpful. It is the quickest way to reduce 

 coarseness to symmetry, and to establish fixed characteristics, but carried too 

 far its refinement quickly descends to weakness and disease. In the present 

 state of our improved breeds of cattle it is dangerous ground on which to 

 tread, unless the breeder knows well his way, and is entirely unsafe except for 

 the most skillful to undertake. Few know well enough the laws of heredity 

 and descent in the animal kingdom to be competent to successfully direct such 

 operations. I do not propose to go into the discussion of methods of breeding 

 pure-bred cattle, as that would require more time and space than I have at 

 present, and I only speak incidentally of in-breeding because I know many 

 breeders over-rate their ability to use this means for the improvement of their 

 cattle. We may breed nearly related in-lines or families, always keeping a 

 strong and vigorous constitution, with advantage, because the inherent quali- 

 ties become as it were intensified and are more uniformly transmitted. This 

 is what gives value to pedigrees which at first thought may seem fictitious, but 

 when founded on real superiority in an extended ancestry, becomes a most 

 valuable point for a pure-bred animal. 



I will farther say in this connection that the great multiplication of breeders 

 of pure-bred cattle does not promise to increase the average quality of merit. 

 So many attempt it from motives of profit or pride to own and keep fine stock, 

 and who do not have the knowledge and ability to carry on a judicious system 

 of breeding, while others expect the improved cattle will grow without feed 

 and can live on air and water, so that large numbers of well bred cattle are so 

 badly used that they actually deteriorate instead of being constantly improved. 



In our present circumstances the cattle of Michigan must be improved not 

 by breeding all pure-bred cattle of any one or all the breeds, but by using some 

 of these improved breeds as a means of improving what we call our common 

 cattle. Of the 633,531 cattle in this State probably not over four or five thou- 

 sand at the highest estimate, are pure-bred registered stock ; and the rest are 

 composed of fine grades, common stock, and scalawags, the latter far too 

 numerous for a State that boasts of the intelligence and enterprise of her 

 farmers, and of the high average in value of her crops. 



Our cattle must be improved by crossing the cattle we have with some of the 

 pure breeds continuously, and not allowing them to go back to their old places 

 after one spasm of improvement has been passed after making the first cross 

 from which often very choice animals are produced, often equaling in appear- 

 ance the pure-bred. Inconsiderate or penurious improvers will say, ** these are 



