SCIENCE OF BREEDING. 147 



needs be but forms of the same force. Nature seems to work 

 always under law, and her phenomena, in successive group- 

 ings, continually point to governing laws, and these in turn 

 to others, until we must conceive of one great final law, in 

 infinity, to which all others are subordinate. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



In the higher classes of animals our first knowledge of the 

 individual life is of the union of two germs, — the one fur- 

 nished by the female, the other by the male. The product of 

 this union is a determinate one, and is influenced in a varied 

 degree by multitudinous causes, the more proximate of which 

 are parentage and environment, and the more remote the 

 antecedents of the individual and the race. 



The creation of the individual and the fixing of a type for 

 a domestic breed is, under law, largely within the power of 

 man, and the understanding of the action and reaction of law 

 on law, in the production of certain ends of animal structure 

 and function, constitutes the science of breeding. 



The science of breeding is not necessarily an exact science. 

 It deals with concrete phenomena, and its predictions must 

 be, in the main, general. By acting in conformity with its 

 predictions, the probabilities of the successful attainment of 

 our ends in the individual is very largely increased ; when 

 individual knowledge of the laws of causation is understand- 

 ingly applied to the problem of breeding certain results from 

 an animal of known antecedents, the probabilities of the posi- 

 tion have a near approach to certainties. 



The scientific breeder is one who applies the laws governing 

 the art with an understanding of the reasons upon which his 

 expectations are based ; while the practical breeder is one who 

 follows rules established by experiment and belief for the 

 government of produce and production. It is as the art of 

 breeding is united with the science that the best results may 

 be expected ; and practice is dependent on science for its 

 correctness and the enlargement of its usefulness. 



To the believer in causation — a principle which underlies 

 the practise of all science — the animal structure and func- 

 tion is a result produced by, and in conformity to, law ; and 

 were the whole history of all the forces which have taken part 



