638 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



character. AVe don't mean it. There is no character to blood at all. 

 We use the term "blood" to measure the concentration of character- 

 istics of one generation or another. There is no such thing as ''blood," 

 although I suppose that is a term that will alwaj^s be used. It is an 

 impossibility to transmit a visible material from one generation lo 

 another. You bu}^ a certain animal because he has a pedigree, because 

 you know his ancestors to have been good animals, and there is reason 

 to believe that these qualities Avill be transmitted to this animal. How 

 will this occur? By the passage of the serum from the male to the 

 female, when the breeding begins, through which the new animal takes 

 his character partly from the male, and partly from the dam. That 

 from the male is probably 1-4.50, Avhile that from the female is a little 

 greater because it has a little more blood. But there is in these two 

 minute cells — spermatoza — the germ of the life and character of the 

 male, and the same thing is true of the female. This foetus is carried 

 into the womb of the dam. Both the male and the female contribute 

 a like amount, and the fact that the foetus gets its sustenance from 

 the blood of the dam gives her no greater control over the character- 

 istics of the offspring than the sire. These two little bodies are both 

 microscopic, and each has only a small part of the material necessary 

 for the new animal after it is conceived. Now. to follow that material 

 through the various processes by which it grows and develops, and the 

 changes it undergoes, is interesting, and well worth while for one 

 who has the time and inclination, but it is not necessary for the prac- 

 tical part of the work. The point I want to make is that the animal 

 gets from his sire and dam the characteristics he will show, througii 

 these little cells, not over 1-1000 in diameter. That is a fact abso- 

 lutely sure ; there is no guess work about it. 



Now, the question is, if you are buying that animal with a view 

 to what kind of offspring he will produce, it is not the blood that is 

 in him, but the kind of material he will put into his female that you 

 are buying him for. That is the actual hereditary material that is 

 transmitted from one generation to another. The direction of that 

 germ plasm rest equally with the sire and the dam. They direct it 

 during the entire period of gestation. That is a definite fact — not 

 theory. The question then is not so much the amount of germ plasms 

 that he will put into the females of his herd, but the character of 

 them. There are various theories on the matter of this transmission 

 of characteristics by means of germ plasms. Darwin gives as his 

 theory that it was thrown off from the various portions of the body, 

 which went into the blood and reproductive organs — the ovaries and 

 testicles, so as to furnish all the blood for all the cells that go to 

 make the offspring. Another theory is that the germ plasm was in the 

 testicles of the male; that it was thrown off, and entered the reproduc- 

 tive organs of the female, into the ovaries; that most of it went to 

 make up the new animal, and part was laid aside. The animal has 

 the qualities that he got from his sire and dam, and there is nothing 

 you could do to that animal to change the character of those germ 

 plasms, and the only way to control heredity, is to pick out the 

 breeder. 



That means that it is necessary to look into his ancestry. The 

 animal that you are breeding has the characteristics of his sire and 

 dam, who, in turn, received their characteristics from their sires and 

 dams, and so on, all the way back. You have to go back to some of the 



