An Introduction to a Biology 



cattle." Everybody, including myself, laughed at it as a 

 genial pleasantry ; but since then, I have come to see that 

 it is one of the most pregnant utterances on the subject of 

 breeding that I have heard. It embodies in an epigram- 

 matic way all that is meant by the statement that breed- 

 ing is an art. It means that it requires a man of force and 

 personality, like Bakewell, for instance, to foresee an ideal 

 and attain to it by methods of which he himself, like the 

 musician, is probably unconscious. It requires an inborn 

 gift to force a new breed, or an improvement of an old 

 one, on the acceptance of mankind, just as it requires an 

 inborn gift to express oneself by means of an arrangement 

 of sounds which mankind will recognise as music. What 

 then is the relation of science to this art of breeding ? The 

 answer, in my opinion, is that it is the business of science 

 (to change the simile) to supply the best pigments and 

 brushes wherewith the picture is to be painted ; to place at 

 the disposal of the breeder the instruments of precision 

 which will enable him to carry out his work efficiently. The 

 breeder knows, pretty well, the end he wishes to attain ; 

 it is the function of science to supply him with the means 

 which shall enable him most expeditiously to reach that 

 end. 



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