Blood will Assert Itself According to Its Class and Qual- 

 ity; Environment is Only a Humble Servant; Blood 

 will Win when Environment Fails 



^HROUGH an innate love for the close study of the creation of all vari- 

 eties of animal life I have spared no pains, labor or expense in re- 

 search, experiment and closest observation, with a desire to fathom 

 a thousand mysteries which became apparent from time to time in 

 my animal breeding pursuits. I have wasted not only money, 

 but that still more precious commodity called time, in not only reading, but 

 listening to those common and erroneous and contagious idle theories about 

 environment and purely external influence in animal breeding, so common 

 with those of limited information or who are superficial in knowledge of blood 

 influence. My known contact with animal breeding for a lifetime has been 

 such as to victimize me to listen with passive respect to a countless number of 

 discourses or "brain storms" on the subject of environment as the more potent 

 factor than blood itself in breeding influence. To have attempted to meet or set 

 right such wanderings and mental confusions would have, in many instances, 

 amounted to a sudden defeat of a long prided private wisdom in the presence 

 of friendly listeners, and hence a pitiful and almost cruel exposure of igno- 

 rance of blood influence would follow, for such wisdom is usually passed around 

 with an almost bigoted self-assurance. 



It is true that early, constant and softer growth of animal life is promoted 

 to a greater extent on a flat, rich, moist and succulent food-producing soil, in a 

 cool, equable and temperate climate, than occurs in a dry, hot, barren and hilly 

 land; and yet when we are about to conclude that we are on "terra firma" in this 

 conclusion we remember that the great elephants abound in Africa. 



With all we are willing to grant environment, that is, food, and especially a 

 climate even or equably tempered throughout the year, is conducive of early and 

 constant development in horses, as is the case in the valleys of France, the plains 

 or Fens of England, and the flats of Ostfriesland, and Oldenberg, Germany, and 

 Flanders of Belgium. 



The moral is we must not jump at conclusions. We must not expect to 

 be called rational if we talk or pretend to believe that grass just across an imag- 

 inary line which divides two States, as Ohio and Kentucky, or Kentucky and 

 West Virginia, or the slight difference in climate and environment of Indiana 

 or Missouri from that of Kentucky and Ohio will make any material difference 

 in horse breeding results if the blood in each State is the same. 



England has bred the mammoth Shire draft horse with just as much success 

 as she has the English thoroughbred, and the environment of England has not 

 taken the long hair off the Shire, and neither has it added it to the thoroughbred. 

 The hair and skin of the thoroughbred is just as flne today as it was a hundred 



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