No. 4.] HEREDITY AND THE DAHIY COW. 15 



that come from him are great big, strong, vigorous animals, 

 and they have the qualities I want ; then I should breed 

 right back to those daughters. If the granddaughters from 

 him, or the daughters, are vigorous, I would go right up that 

 line and if they gave me what I wanted, personally I should 

 breed again. That is to say, there is no reason against in- 

 breeding in our animals except that you double up what you 

 have, and if you have a good dairy quality that doubles 

 up, and if you have lack of vigor that also may double 

 up. Right here we come to the matter of fecundity. You 

 remember a while ago there was a Shorthorn that sold in 

 New York for $40,000 or over, and the fellow who owned 

 that breed said it was a mighty good thing that those cattle 

 were not prolific because they never could keep the breed up. 

 The result was that in three or four years the race was gone. 

 Absolutely the thing we must look after is fecundity in the 

 production of offspring, and also vigor. Now, if you have 

 those two things in your cattle you can keep right on in- 

 breeding. The minute you see, — and here is where a man 

 must be a skillful observer of breeding, — the minute you 

 find your cows beginning to lack vigor, then you must go out 

 and get a germ that has vigor to put in with it. 



I would like to say one other thing in that connection 

 which puzzles the scientists and is extremely interesting, to 

 say the least, and that is that in plants and likewise in 

 animals there seems to be a vigor from a cross of different 

 bloods that is not always explainable by the vigor in the 

 parents. I don't know why it is, I don't know that it has 

 been worked out, and maybe it never will be, but it does 

 seem to be inherent that in the living cells in some way 

 there is an increased vigor from crossing different lines of 

 blood. I don't know why it is, but it evidently is there 

 for some reason. 



Mr. H. G. WoKTTT. I would like to ask Professor True- 

 man, in breeding the white-face male with the red-face poll, 

 where he claims that the white-face predominates, what the 

 effect would be if the red-face male were bred to the white- 

 face poll? 



