DEVELOPMENT 



679 



lines. In no other way can he judge of their real excellence and 

 in no other way is his selection safe. The practice of fitting for 

 the show ring is often deplored, and not without good reason, 

 but of one thing we may be well assured, we can never be 

 certain of the capacities of an individual until they have been 

 put to the test by development. 



One of the hard facts of animal breeding is that the develop- 

 ment of young things is very often left to men who are not 

 skilled in animal production. They seem to assume that the 

 well-bred animal in some way can get along under less favorable 

 conditions than can the unimproved, a kind of offsetting of 

 breeding against feeding and care. 



Improvement consists in producing animals and plants able to 

 make good returns for good conditions, not merely to exist under 

 hard conditions. This fact ought to be pasted in the hat of 

 every farmer. The purpose of breeders is not to produce strains 

 that can live on next to nothing, and that are able to endure 

 hard conditions and not die outright ; it is to produce strains of 

 animals and plants that are able to make good returns for the 

 fuller feed and better care which the civilized and educated 

 farmer can give as compared with nature, which is capricious, 

 or with the unskillful semi-savage, who is improvident. 



One of the most serious faults of unimproved strains is that 

 they do not respond to better food or to more of it. They have 

 been selected for generations for their powers of resistance to 

 hard conditions, and that is where their strength lies. Now that 

 we can provide better food, we need animals of higher efficiency ; 

 indeed, that is our argument for better animals. Then, again, 

 having animals of higher efficiency, we need better feed and 

 more of it, and that is our argument for better-bred corn and 

 other crops. So the two animal breeding and better feeding 

 react the one upon the other, and both go with better farming 

 and with the greater needs of an advancing civilization. 



The well-bred animal is a high-class machine. This fact can- 

 not be too well understood by every man who comes into relations 

 with the well-bred animal, and it is true, whether we consider 

 animals as machines for the producing of milk or meat, of labor, 

 or of body covering ; whether we consider that they are to 



