CHAPTER IV 



NEED OF IMPROVEMENT IN DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 

 AND PLANTS 



Natural species not perfectly adjusted to our needs • Maintenance of animals 

 costly • Further improvement needed • Need of more economic service • Some 

 individuals better than others • Economic significance of differences in effi- 

 ciency • The fact of variability established • Variability in a single character • 

 Historical knowledge of original species needed 



Natural species not perfectly adjusted to our needs. If our 



animal and plant allies had been especially created for our serv- 

 ice, it is to be assumed that they would have been perfectly 

 adapted to our needs ; but as they were appropriated from the 

 wild, they ofttimes but imperfectly meet our requirements. 



For example, the horse is a little too timid, the bull too un- 

 trustworthy and ferocious, the wool of the sheep either too coarse 

 or too short for many needs ; and all animals make meat only 

 at enormous expense of feed, requiring, roughly speaking, about 

 ten pounds of grain or its equivalent for one pound of meat. 



Corn has a little too much oil and not quite enough protein 

 for the best feeding purposes, and the stalk is larger and 

 heavier than we would like. Oats do not yield sufficiently in 

 the warmer sections, and we still lack an ideal pasture grass for 

 most regions of the earth. 



And so we might go on indefinitely, enumerating particulars 

 in which we could wish our domesticated races were better 

 adapted to our requirements. 



Maintenance of animals costly. Few realize the expense of 

 maintaining our extensive animal population. One cow will eat 

 thirty dollars' worth of feed in a year at ordinary prices, and 

 more if she can get it. A horse will eat from fifty to seventy- 

 five dollars' worth, according to the way in which he is kept. 



35 



