LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 479 



How shall we go about it to fix and render permanent or prominent any 

 particular feature, or set of features, in a breed? Simply by selecting 

 ancestors in whom those particular features appear prominently. 



The old rule, " breed from the best," is defective, because it does not set 

 before the mind any definite standard of what is "best." ♦ It may be one 

 day size, another beauty, now productiveness, and again some other 

 standard. 



Y"our ideal of what you want should be a fixed one, so that all your efforts 

 may tend to the same end. 



In all talk about breeding we hear a good deal said about pedigree. Now 

 just what is meant by this word ? Certainly we do not mean merely a 

 showy piece of parchment. No, we mean ancestry ; but there is choice in 

 ancestry, and there is choice even in choice ancestry. 



To be of value a line of ancestry should consistently tend to a specific pur- 

 pose; otherwise, though containing the most famous names known to 

 breeders, and even though it has not a single poor name on the list, yet it 

 may be but a very small recommendation, for the very good reason that its 

 influences may be so arranged as to be continually defeating and counter- 

 acting themselves. 



So fix your ideal, and make all your efforts tend in the direction of that 

 ideal. Do not allow yourself to be drawn aside by any desire to have repre- 

 sentatives of all sorts of families. 



ft People sometimes speak of a " tendency to variation " as though it were 

 an occult and inexplicable thing. There never was any effect, whether in 

 the variation of animals or in any other direction, without an adequate 

 cause. Variations in animals are the legitimate and natural effect of the 

 conditions under which the animals are developed. Climate, food, habits — 

 these are the causes of variation. With us stabling, acting as a modifica- 

 tion of the influence of climate, is an important element in the matter of 

 variation. 



The more an animal has been developed by the influence of special condi- 

 tions away from its original type, the more susceptible it is to further change. 

 These changes are all efforts on the part of the system of the animal or breed 

 to adjust itself to the conditions in which it is placed, and the expressi6n, 

 "survival of the fittest," merely means that those animals whose systems 

 have most perfectly adapted themselves to the conditions of a given locality 

 will live in that locality while others, less well adapted to it die, or are 

 crowded out by their better equipped competitors. 



It is thus that local varieties originate, and it is by the same principles 

 that breeds are improved, and the same influences that produce a breed or 

 variety continue to act all the time. 



If you buy an animal to your liking, you must remember that it is the 

 product of certain special and often highly artificial influences, and if you 

 subject it to directly contrary conditions and influences you must not be 

 surprised if the qualities that you particularly admired lessen or even entirely 

 disappear in itself or its offspring. 



There is another principle in breeding, called the correlation of parts. 

 This means that the relation between the different parts of the animal system 

 is so balanced that no changes in the animal can be made without other bal- 

 ancing changes also appearing simultaneously with it, so that you need to 

 beware lest gains in one direction may be more than offset by the losses in 



