130 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



female, from soft diet, want of exercise, and the like, predisposes 

 to the production of females ; and also, that the parent which 

 was in the most vigorous and perfect health at the time of con- 

 nection l)etween the sexes, is likely to produce the greater num- 

 ber of animals of its own sex. 



Then there are the experiments of Professor Thury of Geneva, 

 which, I must say, have been pretty thoroughly disposed of, but 

 which were carried on with some remarkable results in Switzer- 

 land, upon cattle. He got the manager of a farm (Cornaz) to 

 undertake the breeding of the sexes at will, on this theory, 

 that the ovum which was fertilized in the early stages of rut 

 would produce a female, and that when it was fertilized lower 

 down the Fallopian tubes it would produce a male. The 

 results obtained by Cornaz were very remarkable indeed. The 

 report gives an account of between twenty and thirty experi- 

 ments. He crossed his Swiss cattle with a Shorthorn bull, with 

 a view to obtain females for his dairy, and he produced females 

 in every case by putting the bulls to the cows on the first ap- 

 pearance of heat. He next undertook to produce a certain 

 number of oxen for work, and he put the bull to half a dozen 

 of his cows towards the close of the period of heat, and he 

 produced in every case males. IJe imported a Shorthorn or 

 Durham cow, and wishing to replace his valuable bull by another 

 of the same breed, he had her served at the conclusion of the 

 period of heat, and she produced a bull-calf. In every case, so 

 far as the report goes, he succeeded, but a number of other 

 experiments upon other animals have failed. Whether it was 

 luck, or whether there is something in the theory, I do not 

 know. I am inclined to think there is something in it, but that 

 there are so many counteracting influences that one can rarely 

 attain to anything like the success that he attained. 



Professor Verrill of Yale College, makes a suggestion which 

 is worthy of attention, and that is, in regard to breeding from 

 animals that show a tendency to beget only progeny of a par- 

 ticular sex. Get a female for example, which is found to breed 

 mainly females, and take up her progeny, and endeavor to fix 

 that trait in the breed, if possible. That certainly promises 

 something. At the same time, I confess that my own experi- 

 ence in families of human beings is not at all uniform. I can 

 recall two or three families that had only one male child amdng 



