Education in Breeding. 167 



igreed stock in the minds of those who have been for- 

 tunate enough to read it. The improvement given to 

 good stock and to good feeding by national, state and 

 county shows of stock has also been productive of much 

 good. The high average excellence of imported stock 

 has had a powerful influence both in bringing supe- 

 rior blood and by setting standards which breeders 

 and growers try to attain. 



Lately the class work in our agricultural colleges, 

 the special courses in stock- judging and the public ad- 

 dresses of men advantageously situated where they can 

 learn as well as teach have begun to tell in a very large 

 way. Methods of judging are being developed that 

 educate the judgment of stockmen as to the value of 

 animals which are of high educational value. Principal 

 D. D. Mayne, of the Minnesota Agricultural High 

 School, recently said that modern methods of teaching 

 the judging of stock and corn are unsurpassed in their 

 educational features. He said : "True education is 

 mainly the education of the judgment.. Here is a line 

 of teaching which trains the judgment at every turn." 

 These studies have another very great advantage over 

 Latin or Greek as a means of mental culture. The 

 mind once quickened to the forms, the values and the 

 breeding possibilities of animals and plants are not sep- 

 arated from their implements of study as soon as the 

 text books are laid aside. The student of economic 

 animal and plant forms reads his primer and first read- 

 er in school and the higher books, the real objects, the 

 animals and the problems, are before him throughout 

 his career as a breeder. 



Our educational fathers made a great mistake in 

 using for their educational machinery too large a pro- 

 portion of tools which are not used in the business 

 that most of the students are to follow. It would be 

 wrong to try to educate a man for a chair in Greek by 

 training him in modern horticulture, irrigation, farm 

 machinery, or in modern architecture. It is quite as 

 wrong to throw away too much time and expense by 



