440 Chronicles of Science. [ July, 
power of transmitting good tendencies to the succeeding generation. 
It is thus that not only in the ‘“‘ Duchess ” blood, but in other tribes 
descended from the Kirkleavington herd, we have as the result of Mr. 
Bates’s resolution, patience, skill, and constancy, qualities which re- 
appear in generation after generation of Kirkleavington families of 
the short-horn breed, until the animal may now be safely characterized 
as good if known to be of Bates’s blood. Bates’s blood, or rather 
Bates’s brains —for it is the mental, and in many important particulars, 
the moral character of the breeder which is reflected now in so many 
different herds—is merely another word for patient persistence in 
breeding from animals of a given type, in a great measure disregarding 
the question of relationship, if they possess the requisite health and 
vigour of constitution. Of course, when evils of any kind are inhe- 
rited, such as a tendency to disease or weakness of any kind, breeding 
in and in will intensify and hand that down with as much certainty 
as any other quality; but the natural law of breeding which obtains 
amongst gregarious animals, where the strongest sire is the father of 
the herd or flock—to the almost entire disregard of previous natural 
relationship, is a safe one to follow. It is a natural law of this kind 
that gives to particular herds and flocks, where they have been long 
under the control of one man, their uniformity of character from year to 
year. And it is out of the consequent certainty which animals thus 
bred transmit the qualities they have inherited, that those extraordinary 
prices are commanded by them, which, while they sometimes startle the 
commercial world, have thus an interest for the man of science. 
The other topic of the period, of chief agricultural interest, is the 
annual meetings of our great national and provincial Agricultural 
Societies. On these occasions, the best animals of all our breeds of 
the domestic animals of the farm, and the best machines known to 
agriculturists or agricultural engineers, are collected, professedly 
for the prizes offered by the Society, really for the purpose of that 
advertisement, publicity, and distinction, which mere exhibition before 
a multitude, and especially the achievement of any award of merit, 
under such circumstances confers. 
Our national societies with incomes of 10,0001. per annum, and the 
many local and county societies with incomes of one to three thousand 
pounds each, are among the most striking illustrations we can quote 
of our agricultural energy and enterprise; for these sums are but a 
fraction of the expenditure which these annual shows occasion, and 
give but a faint idea of the commercial advantages which they offer ; 
and the strictly educational results of these meetings in which we are 
here more particularly interested, can hardly be overrated. Breeders 
realize their own deficiencies by a comparison with the best animals 
of the best herds and flocks; and machine makers have both their in- 
ventive faculties stimulated and their manufacturing abilities quick- 
ened and increased by competition with each other, on the same field 
close to one another, where the prize of commercial merit is so great. 
Above all, the agricuiturists of a whole province realize the pro- 
gress which the best examples thus collected for their inspection prove 
to have been accomplished. 
