PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 69 



dnced three calves with different properties ; and, 

 secondly, trace out the rules which we are to follow, to 

 be almost uniformly successful in obtaining stock of the 

 best quality. 



Experience shows that the qualities which are trans- 

 mitted with most certainty depend on the most import- 

 ant organs of life ; and so, in the forms of the viscera 

 and the skeleton, variations are rare, not only in breeds 

 of the same species, but in different species of the same 

 genera. 



Moreover, in cases where the transmission of proper- 

 ties is so uncertain as to seem the result of caprice in 

 nature, these properties are formed by superficial 

 organs, by the skin, the horns, the state of the hair, 

 etc. 



But it is in qualities which are, in a measure, arti- 

 ficial, qualities produced by domestication, and often 

 more injurious than useful to the health of animals, that 

 variations most commonly occur. These change not 

 only with the breed of one species, but with the dif- 

 ferent individuals of the same breed, of the same half- 

 breed, and often of the same family. 



Bearing these elementary principles of natural his- 

 tory and physiology in mind, we shall comprehend how 

 cows and bulls well marked in regard to escutcheons 

 have produced stock which did not resemble them. M. 

 Lefebvre Sainte Marie asserts that the influence of the 

 escutcheons is very feeble in the act of reproduction. 



In this view, the escutcheon is almost nothing in 

 itself. It depends on the state of the hair, on one of 

 the most fleeting of peculiarities, on that which is least 

 hereditary in animals. It has no value as a mark of 

 good getters of stock, unless it is supported by marks 

 superior to it from their stability, a larger skeleton, 

 double loins, ? wide rump, highly-developed blood- 



