324 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



the application of her judgment to these points will determine her 

 purchase. It is the same way when you examine a building. You 

 look at the material and the way it is put together, and when it 

 comes to human life and animal life or plant life, you commence the 

 examination, basing it upon the whole fibre, the structure and form, 

 especially the form, to a very great extent; if that is carefully studied 

 it will show you exactly what it is in the one and in the other. We 

 will all admit the laws of physiology; that there is expressed in 

 the countenance and in the form and in the general conformation 

 as well as the line of ancestry back of it, certain tendencies, certain 

 peculiarities which identify themselves with a particular family. 

 You will admit that these things express inner qualities which, you 

 can perpetuate and hand down in a uniform way. If you could make 

 a selection of the best of these qualities and hand them down, it 

 w r ould be a great benefit to civilization and to yourselves. At first 

 I knew nothing at all about the laws of breeding. When I found out 

 that I had a valuable animal that produced a fine calf, I considered 

 that I had something to build up to. 



I have learned that we must work on this basis; there must be a 

 careful selection of sires, for that is the true line of breeding. You 

 have but one sire, and you must look to your sire for the improve- 

 ment 'of your herd. If in some one instance the dam has more in- 

 fluence than the sire, it will be found after all that it will be to your 

 advantage to especially look to the sire. When animals are se- 

 lected for the race track, it is the sire that brings out the qualities 

 desired, and it is the sire that brings the thousands of dollars which 

 we read of. It is very seldom the dam is sold for so much as the 

 sire. If the sire has the ability to transmit and goes into a herd, 

 he is able to impress his prepotency and his qualities upon that herd 

 in such a way that the whole herd is built up, and the improvement 

 is commenced then and there. The question sometimes arises, should 

 that sire ever be killed or slaughtered, because he is cross or ill- 

 tempered? Or should he be killed because he is getting old? I say 

 no, that sire should be handed from farm to farm until natural laws 

 take him away. 



In dealing with the subject of breeding, one of the most important 

 questions, we always start with a calf that has a good ancestry 

 back of it. Let us take a line of ancestry that w T e know to be good. 

 The first thing to look at in ancestry is the constitution. While I 

 endorse every word said about inbreeding, I want to say to you that 

 it is one of the most delicate things imaginable in practice. A man 

 should not imagine that he can go into the business of inbreeding be- 

 cause he has paid so much for a sire and so much for a dam. It re- 

 quires the nicest observation, it requires years of experience for a 

 man to know when to inbreed; I tried it to my own satisfaction, and 



