SELECTION 587 



herd without a head, and of the enforced evil practice of using 

 an untried sire. 



Comparative value of male and female. In the matter of pre- 

 potency, as we have already seen, neither parent has any partic- 

 ular advantage over the other. But this refers to a single 

 offspring, and is only a part of the question. The real differ- 

 ence is one of numbers. Among animals the sire may produce 

 perhaps a hundred in a season, while the dam is limited to one 

 individual or at most (among hogs) to two litters. The trotting 

 records show that certain sires produced hundreds of offspring 

 in the list, but Green -Mountain Maid, who produced nine living 

 foals, long held the record, since greatly exceeded by other mares. 



For purely mathematical reasons, therefore, the female is of 

 vastly less consequence in herd or breed improvement, indeed, 

 wherever polygamous mating occurs. It is here a question of 

 numbers and opportunity. As regards these, the upper limit of 

 the male is very high and of the female very low, which fact 

 teaches the necessity of extreme care in the selection of the 

 sire, not so much for biological as for numerical reasons. The 

 single female is, therefore, comparatively insignificant. Unless 

 she be one of the few phenomenal breeders her individual power 

 for good is exceedingly low, and the readiness of many buyers 

 to pay extreme prices for females, especially of cattle, is wholly 

 unaccountable. 



The sire more than half the herd. It has become a proverb 

 that the sire is half the herd. He is far more than that. He 

 is half of the first generation, three quarters of the next, seven 

 eighths of the third, and so on until, if judicious selection be main- 

 tained for a fezv generations, the cJiaracter of the Jierd -will be 

 fixed by the sire alone. This being true, the folly of maintaining 

 a sire with but two or three high-class females is evident ; he 

 should have larger opportunity. All this means that, as a begin- 

 ning, numbers are of more consequence relatively than quality 

 on the side of the dam, and that if the breeder must choose 

 between the two it is better to put a given amount of money 

 into a good number of plain females than into a smaller number 

 of high quality, but that in all cases the sire should have quality 

 and plenty of it, because of the principle here stated. 



