SELECTION 



579 



from his purpose by the many other excellent figures that might 

 be cut from the same material, so the breeder should adhere to 

 his standards doggedly. They should be wisely chosen, it is 

 true, but, once sure of that fact, and with the law of ancestral 

 heredity in mind, nothing should warp the judgment as to change. 

 Everything that helps to secure the ideal should be accepted, 

 and everything else, no matter how attractive in itself, should 

 be pushed aside, unless, indeed, the breeder have unlimited 

 means and is minded to do not one thing but many things. 



Keep blood lines pure. But if the breeder is minded to indulge 

 in experiments outside the chosen standard, these experiments 

 must be carried on separately. Blood lines must be kept pure, 

 not pure within breed lines simply, but, remembering the law of 

 ancestral heredity and the pull of the ancestors back of the 

 immediate parent, they should be kept as pure as selection can 

 make them. 



Objects of selection. Indeed, while one object of selection is 

 to reduce numbers, by far the larger object is to purify the 

 ancestry, to the end that inheritance from all the ancestors shall 

 be alike, so that the " pull of the race" shall not be different 

 from the transmission of the immediate parent. This being so, 

 selection according to vacillating standards is no selection at all, 

 and he who returns from each state fair or exposition with new 

 rather than improved standards cannot hope to meet the highest 

 success as a breeder or contribute real excellence to the breed 

 he has chosen. 



SECTION II HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE BREED 



NECESSARY 



This is almost self-evident, and yet the number of breeders 

 who do not possess it, and the readiness with which large money 

 is invested and plans made which will require a lifetime to carry 

 out, all with the most meager knowledge of the breed that 

 is chosen, show how lightly this matter rests in the minds of 

 many otherwise intelligent and cautious business men. 



These men proceed as if the material they were to work with 

 were new material, ready to be molded for the first time into 



