88 My Little Farm 



half horns and half no-horns ; " but here is a horn- 

 less calf, a young bull still at home, after all these 

 pure horned generations on the male side, and after 

 as many hornless dams on the other side, each dam 

 the product of a horned sire, not to mention that 

 the breeding was horned on both sides before the 

 intervention of the red poll. So far, only one calf 

 in this line has had horns. If Mendel be right, or 

 half right, how could that one hornless sire of so 

 long ago have imposed his unscientific prepotence 

 through all these generations and against all these 

 odds ? The thing may apply to sweet peas. It 

 does not apply to cattle, at least not as interpreted. 

 In my cattle, the exceptions are more than twice 

 as numerous as the indications of the " Law." 



It is but fair to add that whatever the value of 

 the scheme, it would have been impracticable to 

 me without the facilities afforded by the Depart- 

 ment ; and its value is not confined to the results 

 described above, for, along with these, on the same 

 little farm, and as carefully worked out, there is 

 another experiment, with native stock and pure 

 shorthorn sires alone. The results here are 

 described in a later part of this chapter. I have 

 now started yet a third experiment, crossing the 

 two best representatives of the respective families, 

 just to see what results ; but I do not mean to 

 merge the two families in one, because it seems to 

 me of great interest to keep the different develop- 

 ments side by side for comparison. The compara- 

 tive results have proved very instructive already, 

 showing the need for an element neither native 



