GENETICS AND BREEDING 169 



the practical animal breeder, it must be agreed, 

 I think, that the chief contribution of recent dis- 

 coveries in the field of inheritance is that they have 

 brought to light and fairly established certain gen- 

 eral principles which enable him in greatly in- 

 creased measure to understand and interpret his 

 methods and his results.^ This may seem too 

 mild a statement of the practical value of genetic 

 science to the animal breeder. It undeniably does 

 lack the grandeur of the vision sometimes opened 

 out by the extension lecturer in his zeal to inspire 

 the farmers to better things, and at the same time 

 pave the way to increased appropriations for his 

 institution. But to help one to understand and 

 to interpret is, after all, no mean achievement. It 

 signifies that, with much economy of effort, the 

 successful breeder may dispense with the merely 

 trivial and unessential in his empirical methods, 

 and more directly and uniformly attain the same 

 or a greater measure of success than before. To 

 his less successful brother and the beginner, it 

 means a surer and more rapid guide than the old 

 tradition based on empiricism. It is certain that 



^ This is of course to be understood as a general statement. There 

 are now a few specific instances, and in time there will be more, where 

 the geneticist has been able to show the breeder precisely how to 

 attain a particular result in breeding commercially for a particular 

 quality, which result he had only hitherto been able to obtain by 

 chance. In no such case, however, so far as I am aware, has the 

 new method been so essentially different from former practice as to 

 be fairly regarded as "revolutionary." 



