314 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



red calf born. If a man knows anything about the history of 

 Angus cattle, he knows that the occurrence of a red calf now 

 and then is perfectly normal and does not cast any reflection upon 

 the stock he is working with. In the same way a man dealing 

 with Berkshire hogs perhaps notices a sandy tint in some of his 

 pigs and is disposed to think that someone has sold him as pure 

 bred Berkshire, hogs that were not pure bred. He does not know 

 that at the earliest time in their history, the pure bred Berkshires 

 were red and the recurrence of this is a perfectly normal thing. 

 Another man sees black spots on the ears of his Leiscester rams 

 and begins to doubt the purity of their blood, and yet if he will 

 go back in history, he will find that the man who founded the 

 breed used as the most potent element in his flock a black ram 

 and it is perfectly natural to expect black spots on the ears of 

 Leicester rams'. That gives you some illustration of what I have 

 in mind about being able to account for things that happen and 

 able to plan for things that have not yet happened but which can be 

 brought about by the intelligent use of this blood. 



We have J. H. Sanders' definition of a breed— it is a group of in- 

 dividuals possessing distinctive characteristics, (and I would like 

 to emphasize the distinctive characteristics) not common to other 

 members of the species. It makes a breed the division of a species 

 just the same as the species is a division of a genus, and the second 

 part is that these distinctive characteristics must be so firmly fixed 

 as to be uniformly transmitted. We have a great many groups of 

 individuals that possess distinctive characteristics not common to 

 other members of the species, and yet those do not constitute breed 

 groups for the simple reason that those characteristics are not 

 sufficiently fixed to be transmitted. We could refer to a great 

 many cross breeds. You take tlie cross breed and we can produce 

 in poultry certain plumage conditions with a high degree of reg- 

 ularity by certain hybridizing processes, and yet you cannot take 

 the cross breeds and get any distinctive results. In 4he same way 

 the cross bred bullock in England and Scotland is produced with 

 great regularity; blue-gray is produced by the mating of Newfound- 

 land White Shorthorns and Angus Galloways, yet they have uot 

 qualified as a breed. As you study breed history, you find that 

 some breeds have passed through an evolutionary period. Take the 

 Oxford breed of sheep; it is a composite breed, almost a cross 

 breed, the blending of two distinct types. Up to a certain time, 

 those cross breeds would not breed with any desrree of uniformity. 

 The cross breeds themselves fulfill tlie first half of our breed re- 

 quirements: they possess distinctive characteristics but they would 

 not transmit them always until tlie breed had been so intensified 

 that they would finally breed with a high deirree of uniformity. 

 The Oxford was accepted as a breed and classes made for it at the 

 shows; that is what a breed is. 



The thing I wanted to emphasize most about this definition is 

 the distinctive character, and to them I want to call your attention. 

 r have heard men say on several occasions that, to confine my re- 

 marks now to flraft horses, that they would not breed to anything 

 but horses of a certain breed in that same breed, and T have heard 

 other men just as positively say that they wonld not breed to a 



