io Breeding Plants and Animals. 



sought shall be kept prominent; (c) that fecundity, 

 stamina, and disease resistance shall be increased ratner 

 than diminished; and (d) that all characteristics shall 

 be so correlated in the individuals that the production 

 of the breed or variety will be highly profitable. 



15. Performance records, as of the trotting horse 

 or dairy cow ; tests of intrinsic values, as the percent- 

 age of sugar in sugar beets, or the toughness of gluten 

 in wheat; as well as records of visible characteristics, 

 as beauty in a horse, size and smoothness of a steer, or 

 stiffness of straw in a variety of oats, are now being re- 

 corded in many lines once thought impossible. And 

 these records are worked into pedigrees showing rela- 

 tive values of individuals and of strains of blood, thus 

 giving emphasis to the best stocks of animals and plants 

 and causing them to be widely used. 



1 6. Many other lines of importance, of intrinsic 

 qualities, and of visible qualities of quasi-value, or 

 those useful merely as distinguishing marks by which 

 to identify blood lines of known value which cannot 

 be recorded by the methods now known, could be 

 shown in performance pedigrees, if methods were de- 

 vised for the respective purposes. 



17. Money could be expended with as much profit 

 in determining the percentage of lean meat in families 

 of hogs, as in determining the speed in trotting horses 

 and in testing the hardiness and longevity of clover 

 plants as in determining the percentage of sugar in 

 sugar beets. Methods need not be more complicated 

 in many untried lines than in lines where performance 

 records are now with great profit already being re- 

 corded. 



1 8. More comprehensive methods of selection 

 would have avoided a lessening of fecundity in some 

 families of improved swine, and a decreasing of milk- 

 giving qualities in some families of beef and general 

 purpose cattle ; and with more attention to general val- 

 ues the too exclusive policy of breeding the fast trotters 

 for the short race would not have so greatly jeopardized 



