ANIMAL BREEDING 659 



there are too many animals of a given breed available, and that, 

 in self-protection, new standards must be set up. 



This is confusing to the buyer and only hurtful to the breed- 

 As a matter of fact, there never were and never can be too many 

 really excellent animals of any breed. The question of develop- 

 ing the market for pure-bred stuff will be discussed later, but here 

 it is enough to say that no artificial standards should be tolerated 

 in any breed merely to create sales. This matter can be con- 

 trolled by the breeders themselves in their own associations, and 

 when it is controlled a large share of the senseless and disturbing 

 "decrees of fashion" will have disappeared and the remaining 

 ones will have been mostly modified into comparative harmless- 

 ness. There is too much homemade law passing from mouth to 

 mouth among breeders, without the sanction of associations, and 

 much of it would never be seriously supported on any floor if the 

 advocates were really required to seriously defend it. Here is a 

 duty that every association owes the breed it advocates and 

 whose interests it maintains. 



But when all is said and done, how shall the individual proceed to 

 meet the decrees of a craze that in his judgment will speedily pass ? 



There is no better way than by the use of sires that strongly 

 possess the points demanded in the market, always being care- 

 ful to preserve a goodly number of the best females uncontami- 

 nated from the infection. These will form the nucleus of the 

 new herd or stud after the craze has passed and the pendulum 

 has swung back to the normal. 



Here the breeder must be wise in his judgment as to whether 

 a new thing is only a passing craze or is really a permanent 

 improvement in the breed, and here his accumulated knowledge 

 of animals will serve him well; but he should be well advised 

 that by the proper use of the sire a herd may be made to turn 

 out a new style of animal for a considerable time without in any 

 way affecting the real character of the foundation, and this can be 

 continued as long as the old stock of females lasts. As the time 

 of their end approaches, however, something must be done to 

 restore their number, or else the new point must be accepted and 

 bred into the females which really constitute the backbone of 

 every producing herd. 



