250 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



vidual first and then a good pedigree. The Berkshire of today is very 

 much improved over the Berkshire of twenty or thirty years ago. "We 

 have increased his length, shortened his nose and added quality as well. 

 We have had little of the "fad" idea to contend with. There has been 

 some threatening of a "fad" for pug noses, but it has not gained much 

 footing. While we like a short, broad, well dished face, few have gone to 

 the extreme of advocating the really pug nose. There are, however, always 

 those who would go to the extreme in any direction. The American peo- 

 ple, I believe, are given to it in many cases, but luckily they, the extrem- 

 ists, are always in the minority. Even the Tamworth hog, lauded by 

 some, notably the teachers at some of our agricultural colleges, as the 

 ideal bacon hog, possessing, I might say, a monopoly in length of nose and 

 leg and slimness of body to a degree that leaves him without a rival 

 even in the person of the "razor-back," has his admirers. No matter 

 how extremely false the idea, there seems to be those who embrace it 

 with all the zeal known to human. If this type, so contradictory to all 

 universally accepted ideals of profitable meat producing animals, is to be 

 accepted as sound teaching, I do not see how we are to'escape the undoing 

 of all we have accomplished in the past hundreds of years in the building 

 up of the most profitable type of meat producing animals. The thick 

 fleshed, short legged bullock that ha s so long been our ideal, and which 

 has furnished the choicest cuts of juicy, lean beef, as well as the well 

 bred wether of like quality, will have to give way to the one of longer 

 legs, longer head, thinner in flesh, if this idea is to prevail. 



There being' no discus.sion on this paper, ]Mr. Thompson pre- 

 sented the following : 



MENDEL'S LAW AND ITS BEARING UPON PRACTICAL BREEDING 



OPERATIONS. 



.70II.\ THOMPSON. SIOUX CITY, lA. 



What is known as Mendel's law was discovered some forty-three years 

 ago by an Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel, in the garden of his cloister. 

 While Mendel gave his discovery to the scientific world through one of 

 its organiationa, he apparently failed to impress upon his listeners and 

 the world in general the great scientific as well as the far reaching, 

 practical value of his discovery. It was not until after the rediscovery 

 of this law in 1900 by De Vries, Correns and Tachermak that scientific 

 men began to realize its significance. In 1902 Batescn pointed out its wide 

 application, and since that time it has received considerable study at the 

 hands of both plant and animal breeders. So far as the law has been 

 tested it has not been found wanting in any material sense of the word. 

 Plant breeders have done so much more to test its validity than have 

 breeders of animals, for the obvious reason that the difficulties in the way 

 of attacking problems of that kind are much more easily overcome by the 

 former than by the latter. So far practical breeders of live stock have 

 taken very little notice of Mendel's law; in fact, I have heard men promi- 

 nent in the breeding world, men who have made a success of their busi- 



