422 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



qualities will therefore be intensified in the offspring; but where they are of a different or 

 opposite type, the parent possessing the strongest hereditary powers will influence the offspring, 

 but these characteristics will become weakened in time, unless the proper selection be made 

 in successive generations. 



The Best Animals of the Breed should be Selected. No matter how pure 

 the blood, individual differences are great, and some pure-bred animals possess the desirable 

 qualities in a much greater degree than others; consequently in breeding, although the animals 

 may have a long and faultless pedigree, select for breeding purposes the best of these, 

 that is, those having the qualities most marked that it is desired should be transmitted. 

 Even among the splendid race of thoroughbred horses, we find but few of great speed and 

 superlative excellence. Huxley says: 



By selective breeding we can produce structural divergences as great as those of 

 species, but we cannot produce equal physiological divergences.&quot; 



Methodical selection, as practiced by modern breeders, has resulted in producing 

 wonderful changes, in our domestic animals, and yet an unrecorded cause of modification has 

 doubtless been long in existence, a cause which has been termed &quot;unconscious selection,&quot; an 

 instance of which has been given by Youatt, who, in remarking upon Two flocks of New 

 Leicester sheep owned respectively by Messrs. Buckley and Burgess, states that both of their 

 flocks had been purely bred from the original stock of Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty 

 years, and that there was not a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted 

 with the subject, that the owner of either of them had deviated in any one instance from the 

 pure blood of Mr. Bakewell s flock, and yet the difference between the sheep owned by these 

 two gentlemen was so great that they had the appearance of being quite different varieties. 

 It is evident that neither of these breeders intended to alter the character of his flock, but 

 endeavored to produce the best sheep of this breed possible, and hence, selected those for 

 breeding purposes which approached most nearly to his ideal of a perfect New Leicester 

 sheep; but owing to the different standards of excellence aimed at by these two breeders, the 

 great difference arose. Even differences so slight as to be scarcely perceptible by the breeder 

 may in the course of years produce changes so obvious that animals thus bred may seem like 

 different varieties. 



With respect to breeding for purity of blood, the object being to create and preserve a 

 fixity of type, we must select animals possessing the same characteristics in order that we 

 may invariably reproduce the good characteristics with greater certainty, and in an improved 

 form in the offspring. If the individual animals be well selected, we shall in every generation 

 gain stronger and stronger hereditary power and permanence of qualities. We shall 

 concentrate the peculiarities of the race or breed. But we must avoid, as far as possible, 

 any opposing influences in the parents, as tending to weaken the hereditary tendency in the 

 young. We are to avoid anything like crossing, with the strictest care. 



Respective Influence of the Sire and Dam. If the sire and dam possess 

 qualities and characteristics alike, they will transmit these qualities with force to their 

 offspring; there will be a uniformity in their progeny that could never be obtained from 

 parents of dissimilar characteristics. The nearer the parents are alike, the more certain will 

 they transmit their qualities to their offspring, while when the two parents possess opposing 

 or unlike qualities, the one which possesses the strongest hereditary qualities, or the strongest 

 power of transmitting his qualities, will gain a preponderating influence over the offspring. 

 Take, for instance, a cow with some special peculiarity of form, and breed her to a bull 

 having points of form quite opposite in this respect, and the calf will take the character, so 

 far as this peculiarity of form is. concerned, of the parent which possessed the greatest 

 hereditary power, or the greatest purity and unity of influence, what we may call fixity 



