234 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



much better than to start with a much better stock, and give it 

 poor handling, poor feed and poor care. Some men knoiv what is 

 best to do but they don't like to get out in the cold and snow after 

 dark to look after the comfort of the animals. There is as much 

 in that as there is in the feed. The natural law is the "survival of 

 the fittest:" The man who works faithfully deserves credit and 

 success, while the man who won't work, of course, deserves to go 

 down in failure. 



Mr. Kitchen : I heartily agree with Mr. Harned in what he 

 says about the Angus men being guilty of abusing Blackbirds and 

 Queen Mothers; and it calls to mind an incident up in my county 

 of a Virginian who was six to seven feet tall, and the most un- 

 gainly creature I ever saw (however, he was anything but a fool) . 

 A professional horse trader was trying to sell him a horse. The 

 horse trader told him all about the good qualities of the ancestors 

 back of that horse, their good disposition, and all. (The animal, in 

 question, was a little bit of a knook-kneed, bow-legged creature.) 

 The Virginian listened patiently as long as he could ; then he said, 

 "Now, that's enough of that. I don't want to hear any more. I 

 have got a good pedigree, but look at my form!" 



Mr. Kidd — As one who attended this convention last year, I 

 want to express my appreciation of Mr. Harned's paper. Last year 

 we had quite a discussion of this subject, and everybody was try- 

 ing to reach the same point, and Mr. Harned has clearly brought 

 out what we were trying to get at last year, and I think the paper 

 ought to be commended. 



Prof. Mumford — Mr. Harned called attention to one fact, 

 which it seems to me, is important: The value of an animal does 

 not depend primarily upon the good points of an animal that lived 

 50 or 60 or 75 years ago. All of our breeding indicates that the 

 most essential thing in the pedigree of an animal is that the im- 

 mediate ancestor of that animal be good, rather than the ancestor 

 that lived twenty centuries back. If there is one criticism that can 

 be placed against the breeders of improved live stock at the present 

 time, especially in the cattle trade, it is that of selling cattle upon 

 the basis of the good qualities that existed in ancestors that were 

 produced 20 or 30 centuries back. We want to know the qualities 

 and characteristics of the ancestors that existed in the last four or 

 five generations. 



