PREFACE 



IT is now more than thirteen years since Mr Walter Heape in 

 a work on " The Breeding Industry" pleaded for " the establish- 

 ment of a State Department of Animal Industry, organized and 

 controlled by a staff fitted by their training; first, systematically 

 to record the condition of the industry throughout the Kingdom ; 

 secondly, to deal with the many problems breeders from time 

 to time require solved ; and, thirdly, to present the result of such 

 work to breeders in a practical form." Opinions may differ as 

 to how such work may most profitably be carried out, but that 

 the need for it, at any rate as regards cattle-breeding and beef- 

 production, is as great as, or greater than, it ever was, must be 

 clear to anyone who reads the present work to which these 

 remarks are by way of preface. 



It may be objected that the breeding of domestic animals is 

 an art and not a science, and that the great breeders of past 

 generations, like all successful judges of live-stock, were men 

 highly endowed with those special attributes of hand and eye 

 which together compose the peculiar faculty of selecting, for 

 the perpetuation of their kind, beasts of a type most serviceable 

 to man. There is much truth in this criticism. In choosing an 

 animal at a sale or judging it at a show, it is usually impracticable 

 to adopt methods of precision ; at any rate these are seldom or 

 never employed, for the judgment is arrived at after a survey 

 which though often hasty may nevertheless be wonderfully 

 correct. Yet it is obvious that the art of selection, valuable as 

 it is, would be of incomparably greater service if supplemented 

 by accurate anatomical knowledge and an appreciation of the 

 varying degrees of functional value possessed by the different 

 parts of the animal. As Mr Heape expressed it in the work 

 already quoted "the condition of the breeding industry now 

 is no whit better than was the art of sculpture before anatomy 

 became a science, and by the application of science the breeder 



