CHAPTER III. 



THE SCIENCE AND ART OF BREEDING. 



Breeding of any of our domestic animals is an art based 

 on strictly scientific principles. It may be thought that it 

 is an art only, and the mere exercise of the results of experi- 

 ence, without any thought of the principles involved in the 

 reproduction of the animals under the control of mankind. 

 But in truth it is the application of experience to any skilled 

 purpose first studying the reasons why this or that result 

 should be so, that all scientific knowledge consists. This 

 word, science, is not generally understood as to its strict 

 meaning. It is derived from scio (a Latin word), meaning to 

 know. So that we may say in short, that science is merely 

 accurate knowledge. It is not in any sense or in fact, sup- 

 positions or beliefs; but the knowledge of the actual and 

 accurate reasons why things are thus or so, and this knowl- 

 edge applied to the common practice of human life and 

 work, always brings results precisely the same under like 

 conditions. That the results reached by breeders of the do- 

 mestic animals, or in the culture of plants, which possess 

 a strict analogy with animals being sometimes disappointing 

 and fruitless, so far as expectations go, is by no means any 

 contradiction of these facts, but simply due to the imperfect 

 knowledge possessed by breeders of the materials they are 

 working with. And every mistake, or unexpected result, only 

 goes to add to the stock of accurate knowledge which is the 

 essence and fundamental principle of science. 



Science is the accumulated results of work, experiment, 

 and experience. Everything, less or more than this, is 

 mere theory; and this is one of the materials which the 

 scientific student works with, in the course of experiment 

 and practical application of the knowledge gained inch by 

 inch, a,s it were, until some exact results are reached, and 

 these then become really scientific principles. 



