Pedigreed Animals and Plants 23 



provement can better be secured by making new ones 

 then new breeds are needed. 



The breeding of swine will illustrate this point. There 

 is needed a breed which has the prolificacy of the 

 Tamworths, the earliness of maturity of the Berkshires, 

 the comeliness and general desirability of the Poland- 

 Chinas, the ability to make more weight out of a hun- 

 dred pounds of feed than any existing breed, having 

 more lean meat than any of the so-called bacon breeds 

 and with a goodly degree of immunity from hog chol- 

 era, rheumatism and other hog diseases. The writer 

 and Prof. Andrew Boss have presumed to plan for 

 the development of a hog along these lines. If within 

 fifteen years of effort a good degree of excellence could 

 be reached in the combination of the qualities mentioned, 

 and records were preserved proving and amply illus- 

 trating the facts of such excellence, the pedigrees would 

 assist in selling breeding stock at long prices. While 

 many difficulties present themselves at the outset in such 

 an undertaking some have been in part solved and no 

 doubt more may be. Experiments in animal breeding- 

 are so expensive that scientists have not yet seriously 

 undertaken to solve many problems of a practical na- 

 ture which are of immense importance. Half the bat- 

 tle will be won by securing the best available foundation 

 stocks, just as "a steer well bought is half fed'." It 

 would seem wise to use some Tamworth blood and pos- 

 sibly some Yorkshire, at least the families of these 

 breeds should be rigidly tested. Families of Poland- 

 China, Berkshire or of the other hogs long bred in the 

 corn and clover belt may also 'be found to score up 

 well under the score card outlined in the foregoing- and 

 , could be chosen for all or part of the foundation blood. 

 It mav be that the mule-footed hosrs with vieor trans- 

 mitted from their wild Ozark ancestors may have one 

 or more characteristics, as disease resistance, which can 

 be brought into use. When the field is thoroughly re- 

 viewed and the chosen family lines extensively tested 

 then it is time to say whether to make the improvements 



