Selection of Foundation Stocks. 39 



problem look even more difficult from the standpoint 

 of the practical man than it has heretofore appeared. 

 But the breeding fraternity as a whole wants the facts.' 

 The broad historical fact stands out clearly that if we 

 simply breed for generations from the best appearing 

 individuals, we make sure progress, but it comes at too 

 slow a pace, and the final result is not as large an im- 

 provement as we should like. We must not only pick 

 out the superior individuals, but the blood of those 

 which have proved in their young to have the very 

 highest breeding must be sought with far more system 

 and persistency and made to more rapidly crowd out 

 the commoner blood of the breed. The scrub should 

 be more universally replaced by pure, strong blood; 

 and performance pedigrees built up on tests of intrinsic 

 values must be more generally employed to accomplish 

 that result. 



In some species of plants many variations are found 

 by those who deal with them in practical production, as 

 in case of geraniums and chrysanthemums where the 

 gardener views and handles each individual plant. In 

 other easels, as in wheat, the stems or culms from the 

 separate seeds are so interwoven in the field that the 

 individual plant cannot be separately observed. In 

 species like wheat, timothy and oats, methods must be 

 devised under which each seed may be separately plant- 

 ed, that the individual plant may be studied. In case 

 of animals, likewise, methods of comparison must be 

 devised so that each animal can be separately ob- 

 served and a record made of its qualities. Thus 

 the qualities of s the parent, the qualities of its 

 progeny and the average quality of fraternity groups 

 of progeny may be recorded so as to compare not only 

 the individuality but the breeding power of the respec- 

 . tive parents. 



