CHAPTER XXIII. 



EDUCATION IN BREEDING. 



The literature of breeding is from the practical 

 standpoint of today in a backward and unsatisfactory 

 state. The academic texts on breeding used in our 

 ^agricultural schools are ill adapted to their purpose. 

 Their body of thought is not along lines which would 

 benefit the breeder or experimenter and is weak or to 

 say the least misleading. They have been conveying 

 the idea that upon completing a theoretical course of 

 study in the curriculum, they had mastered the very 

 complex, abstruse and mysterious subject of breeding. 

 In this respect they suggest the effort to "learn Greek 

 in six easy lessons." In this way too many minds 

 which might have given an impulse to original thought 

 and investigation have been lulled into a beautiful and 

 satisfied repose. As a nation of wonderfully progres- 

 sive people we have been doing little in working out 

 the facts and. philosophies of this subject. 



Charles Darwin made a grand stride forward in the 

 theories of breeding. His main contention, however, 

 that natural evolution has been the means of develop- 

 ing plants and animals up to- their present estate so 

 overshadowed in his own mind and in the contentious 

 thought of the times any practical economic application 

 of his facts and theories that the full power of his sug- 

 gestive findings has been largely dormant. The lesser 

 contemporaneous and subsequent lights in the discus- 

 sion of heredity have hovered about, fought over, inter- 

 preted and misinterpreted Darwin's great work. They 

 have proved his main theory ten thousand times, and 

 have become "chesty" when they have discovered that 

 some of his statements of facts have been only partial 

 statements or that some of his theories on lesser points 



