FANCY POINTS vs. UTILITY 



Many Animals and Plants Scored for Characters That Are Useless or Even 

 Detrimental to Production — Egg Yield of Fowls Neg- 

 lected — Need For Revision of Standards. 



A. F. Blakeslee 

 Professor of Genetics, Connecticut Agricultural College, Storrs, Conn. 



IT seems not out of place in a maga- 

 zine devoted to breeding and to the 

 development of characters which 

 are judged in the show room, to say 

 a few words in regard to the points and 

 the standards recognized by the show 

 room judge. 



Plants and animals have been do- 

 mesticated and cultivated for one or 

 both of two main reasons — for the 

 pleasure which their presence gives us 

 or for some useful product which they 

 yield in the form chiefly of food, cloth- 

 ing or labor. The distinction is not 

 absolute, even as the distinction be- 

 tween beauty and utility cannot be 

 absolute, but in general we may dis- 

 tinguish the forms primarily orna- 

 mental from those primarily useful. 

 The first are grown as pets, the second 

 for utility. The geranium, the cat, the 

 canary bird and the bantam fowl are 

 pets; the cow, the horse, the laying hen 

 and corn are cultivated for utility. 

 The tomato in our grandmother's gar- 

 den was cultivated for its ornamental 

 fruit and was a pet. Now it has been 

 moved to the vegetable garden and is 

 grown for utility. Ornamental things 

 may be useful, and the market value of 

 a product is not diminished by the 

 inherent beauty of the producer. As 

 the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the 

 lea, it offers no less interesting a sight 

 to the poet and to the artist if the 

 animals are high milk producers. That 

 they are the best of their kind should 

 in fact heighten his admiration. On 

 the other hand, the perfection of form 

 and color that appeals to the eye may 

 indirectly affect the yield. The pride 

 of the flock or of the field will be most 

 tenderly cared for. 



A visible character that has a direct 



connection with yield may be called a 

 utility point while one that has no 

 such direct connection is called a fancy 

 point. Each may be developed without 

 injury to the other, but the man who 

 aims at but a single target is most 

 likely to reach his mark. Seek ye first 

 the most valuable thing and let other 

 good things be as additions unto you, 

 is good advice for all manner of men. 

 To the practical breeder the most 

 valuable thing is yield. This the show 

 room almost entirely leaves out of 

 consideration either directly or by 

 scoring on a multitude of fancy points 

 that often have at best only a fancied 

 connection with the object for which 

 the breed is supposed to be cultivated. 

 In the score card for dairy cattle no 

 place is left for the quantity or quality 

 of milk which the animal is capable of 

 giving. In the ear of corn attention 

 may be given to the straightness of the 

 rows and the completeness with which 

 the tip of the ear is filled out, but the 

 yield per acre is not recorded. The 

 score card for poultry, of which two are 

 shown in Figure 13, gives ten points each 

 for comb, wings and tail, but no credit 

 is given for the nimiber of eggs a bird 

 has laid. Men have paid high prices 

 for prize-winning hens that have failed 

 to produce eggs after they were taken 

 from the show room. 



Attempts in many cases have been 

 made to use characters in the score 

 card that may be indicative of yield. 

 In corn, the filling out of the tip, the 

 size of the ear, the size and compactness 

 of the kernels, are all characters that 

 influence the amount of food substance 

 carried by any individual ear but are not 

 of necessity correlated with the yield 

 per acre. In the experience of the 



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