CHAPTER XIV. 



FREEBORN COUNTY JERSEYS. 



There is no reason why America should not lead 

 in animal breeding as in manufacture, transportation, 

 commerce and education. Our people lack neither the 

 brains nor the patience; they have the largest home 

 market for pure-bred animals in the world and they 

 have secured a full share of the best live stock of the 

 world as a foundation. Yet we continue to pay finan- 

 cial tribtite to the brains, the skill and the live stock 

 instincts of the people on the British Islands across 

 the ocean. They have a plan of co-operation or con- 

 centration by counties. They have cheaper labor, great- 

 er variety of food, especially more of succulent roots, 

 a more equitable climate, and they have the faith that 

 they are at the top. We need a better business plan, 

 a broader philosophy of seeking by combined statistical 

 and artistic methods the very few with the best blood 

 from among immense numbers ; a better knowledge of 

 details, more faithful attendance to the wants of the 

 animals, a greater variety of food ; and we need an 

 abounding faith that America is to lead the world in 

 breed improvement and in breed formation. Our herd 

 books, based too nearly on names, have led us and 

 tied us into a general situation quite as full of folly as 

 the trenchant editorial entitled "Thou Shalt Not" in 

 The Breeders' Gazette of September, 1902, portray- 

 ed. The vastness of our country has led us to this 

 method of breeding mere pure-breds rather than to a 

 method of breeding on a basis of thoroughbred merit 

 in each locality. 



Breeding by counties is one of the secrets of success 

 of the breeders of Britain. Here is our very greatest 

 lesson. The writer spent some time in Europe in 1899, 



