103 



value of twenty calves a year, but little business sagacity is 

 requisite to discover tlie advantageous form of such an invest- 

 ment. 



Tlie power to impress his likeness and quality on the 

 offspring is called prepotency^ and is the assertion of strong 

 blood of pure ancestry over mixed blood and irregular dispo- 

 sition of animals of indiscriminate breeding. 



Form, color, habits, mental traits, or predisposition to 

 disease may make its appearance in the offspring without 

 having been observed in the parents. Agassiz remarked in 

 this connection that the young are the offspring not only of 

 the parents, but of the grandparents as well, and he might 

 have gone further still. Goodale describes an occurrence in 

 point. At a farm in the State of Maine where polled or 

 hornless cattle were kept, and finally the last individual bear- 

 ing the polled head was shot by mistake for a bear by Mr. 

 Wingate, the owner of the farm. For thirty-five years all 

 cattle owned there were horned, then there was dropped an 

 animal which grew up polled and had all the characteristics 

 of the original breed. 



Many instances might be added to show the potency of a 

 pure breed to assert itself. Prof. L. B. Arnold holds that the 

 longer qualities have been possessed and transmitted the more 

 potent are they in their transmission, and that in taxing a sire 

 so that his own personality cannot be clearly stamped, the an- 

 cestral quality will be conferred so long as vitality is commu. 

 nicated, and the lower the vitality the more primitive or 

 strongest of continuously transmitted qualities will be imparted. 



To take advantage of a knowledge of Nature's methods, we 

 must use a sire whose ancestors were all as good as he is and 

 then whether offspring breed after their own sire or his ances- 

 tors you are equally sure of excellence. 



"Grasp and render permanent, and increase as far as possi- 

 ble and practicable, every variation for the better and reject 

 for breeding purposes such as show a downward tendency." 



Here appears the utility of records and pedigree,, for what 

 we seek is called a thorousrii-bred. 



