612 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS 



real individual selection. A line-bred pedigree is valuable or 

 dangerous in exact proportion as the individuals have been kept 

 up to grade. It will not replace selection, but, on the contrary, 

 calls for the most discriminating care within the line. 



If the breeder selects by paper, and not in the yards, and a 

 few generations of inferior animals creep in, then line breeding 

 will consign the whole bunch to the limbos quicker and more 

 certainly than will any other known system of breeding, a 



FIG. 52. Line-bred yearling Berkshires. Get of Baron Duke 6jd 



fate that has overtaken more than one line that unfortunately 

 became prematurely fashionable. 



Line breeding the best system for improvement. No other 

 system of breeding has ever secured the results that line breed- 

 ing has secured, and if the present state of knowledge is reason- 

 ably sound, no other system will ever be so powerful in getting 

 the most possible out of a given breed or variety, especially of 

 animals, and this with the greatest certainty as we go along. 

 The only requirement is, not to abandon individual selection. A 

 pedigree is not a crutch on which incompetence can lean ; it is 

 a guaranty of blood lines, a field inside of which breeding 

 operations and selection may with confidence be confined. 



The word " confined " is used advisedly, for, after line breed- 

 ing has been practiced for a few generations, the ancestry 

 becomes a kind of pure breed of its own, a breed within a 

 breed, so to speak, and any attempt to introduce blood from 



