282 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



Domesticated 



NATURE 



Why Keep Rabbits or Cavies? 



BY CHARLES H. ELLARD, NEW YORK CITY. 



Keeping a few rabbits or cavies, the 

 so-called guinea pigs, may not seem to 

 have any scientific interest or impor- 

 tance, but in them is a tremendous 

 amount of material for study and ex- 

 perimentation that can give one a lib- 

 eral education in heredity, Mendelism 

 and evolution. 



No one just "keeps" these pets and 

 gets any profit out of it. The enjoy- 

 ment and education are in proportion 

 to the efforts he puts forth to develop 

 his stock and their progeny until he 

 approaches some ideal of beauty of 

 form or color or fixes a type that is dis- 

 tinct. If these types have become fixed 

 "permanently," people interested in 

 fancy stock of this kind and controlling 

 by their combined associations the 

 "fancy," give their sanction to the nev^ 

 type, formulate standards, which are 

 supposed to express the highest ideal of 

 the type, and makes classes for them at 

 the accepted exhibitions. The standards 

 are intended to express the ideal of per- 



fection in beauty of lines, form and 

 color. Nature unaided would not pro- 

 duce such perfection. It is the breeder's 

 endeavor to obtain results as near this 

 ideal as he can. To do this he must 

 study the probabilities to be expected 

 from the parents of his future perfect 

 specimen. He must know much of 

 their parentage and must consider care- 

 fully the faults of each parent so that 

 those in the one may be counterbal- 

 anced by the other. A case in point 

 might be the tan rabbit. In breeding 

 this we desire a deep rich black or blue 

 marked with tan in certain definite 

 places and ways about the body. One 

 parent may be particularly good in 

 these markings while the otner may have 

 a clear black in the body color. The 

 probabilities of still better offspring 

 would be good. But if both parents 

 showed a decided tendency to have tan 

 fur mixed with the black good results 

 could not be hoped for from pairing 

 such individuals. In all cases the breed- 

 ing of any of the several varieties of 

 rabbits, cavies, mice or what not when 



A BLUE DUTCH RABBIT AND HER HAPPY CHILDREN. 



