82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



would have remained permanent if only the advice of an en- 

 gineer had been taken. 



Adjourned to Wednesday, at 0| A. M. 



SECOND DAY. 

 The Board met at 9.} o'clock, and Dr. LorinTt was elected 

 chairman for the day. He introduced as the first speaker Prof. 

 James Law, of Cornell University. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 

 By Prof. James Law. 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : — Year by year the interest 

 in our live stock deepens, as we realize the increasing impor- 

 tance of its production and conservation as a branch of agri- 

 cultural industry. The westward march of empire, and .the 

 laying under contribution of our vast western prairies for the 

 production of breadstuffs, combine with the more general diffu- 

 sion of improved and valuable breeds, to demand the exercise 

 of the highest intelligence, and the most advanced and correct 

 knowledge of all that pertains to their improvement, or to the 

 maintenance of their most estimable qualities. 



At the foundation of all excellence in stock lie the principles 

 of breeding. Error here, however venerable or deeply rooted, 

 is especially to be regretted, as, like the spores of the cryptogam 

 in the planted seed, it will fructify in the growing product and 

 blast the harvest, in spite of the most careful tending and cul- 

 ture. He who avails of the rich experience of the past hundred 

 years, reaps his substantial reward in the yearly increasing value 

 of his stock, while the man who ignores or despises it soon 

 realizes in his barren fields and stunted, unproductive herds, 

 that what is not ivell done is not worth doing at all. 



The better to illustrate the known facts and principles which 

 enable us to control the breeding of animals, let us glance 

 shortly at the organisms through which reproduction takes 

 place. In all the higiier animals this is by the union of the pro- 

 ducts of the two sexes, the ovum or eg-g- of the female and the 

 spermatozoon or vitalizing element of the male. In the female 

 the two ovaries produce vesicles from birth, like those in which 

 the ova afterwards grow, but until they reach the bearing- age 

 these do not mature, nor are true ova produced. When the 



