SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART V. B79 



T T-emember at the experiment station that Professor Green, the 

 professor of horticulture, had taught the boys in his department tliat the 

 law of variation was stronger than the law that like produces like; I was 

 teaching in the dairy department that like produces I'ke, and the boys 

 were sharp enough to catch onto these things. They fancied I was teach- 

 ing one thing and that Professor Green was teaching another and they 

 came to us and began to reason with us about it and urged us to come 

 together and fight it out in their presence to find out who was right, but 

 of course we knew that would not do because neither man wanted to risk 

 his reputation in such a contention as that. 



Now having said what I have in regard to the operation of those laws. 

 I pass on to a subject that I think will be of interest to every man who 

 is engaged in the breeding of dairy stock, and that is the question as to 

 how he shall choose a sire and how he can be assured before hand that 

 he is going to get a sire of the right type. How can he know that 

 he is going to get a sire that possesses the properties that he is looking 

 for, or, in other words, how is he going to know that he will get ^ 

 prepotent sire? 



Prepotency in a sire means that that sire has power to reproduce 

 himself in his progeny. You farmers know that sires are generally 

 purchased when they are young and when you cannot put them to the 

 test by observing what kind of progeny they produce. How is one ot 

 you dairymen to go into a dairyman's herd and select a sire and know 

 almost to a certainty that you are going to get the sire you are looking 

 for? I believe, gentlemen, that it may be done with approximate, but 

 not with absolute certainty. 



Now what are the guai^antees of prepotency? You dairymen who are 

 breeders have thought of that, or if you have not thought of it you 

 have not lived up to the height of your privileges. What are the guar- 

 antees that are going to tell you the properties a sire ought to have, 

 how shall you know when you see him? How shall you know when you 

 examine his record that that is the animal you are after, I question 

 whether a more important question has been raised today in this house 

 than that very question which we are considering at this moment. 



Now I do not need to tell you intelligent men who have looked into 

 the subject that one of the most important guarantees of prepotency 

 in a sire is the fact that he has been bred in a certain line for a 

 number of generations, or in other words that he has been purely bred. 

 Now what good does that do that sire? Simply this — it gives him 

 an accumulation of dominant or governing properties in his composition 

 that can be transmitted to the progeny, and the longer that he has been 

 purely bred in that line the more prepotent are those properties going to 

 be, so that length of pedigree is one guarantee that that sire shall have 

 the properties which the breeder is looking after, but allow me to refer 

 right here to a very common mistake that is made. The breeders of 

 Clydesdale horses, for instance, in attempting to sell a sire will probably 

 refer to the fact that that sire is descended from the great Darnley; they 

 .go back ten generations to that great Darnley but because there is Darnley 

 blood in that sire they demand a greater price for the animal they are 

 selling. Let us see how much of the Darnley blood there is in that sire. 



