FIRST CENTURY OF DAIRYING IN NEW SOUTH WALES. 



" figure system" of breeding racehorses. That something of the kind 

 could be worked out with regard to dairy cattle goes without saying 

 when we reflect on the strains that mated best in days gone by and 

 in our own time when the Evans and McGill strains were mated. We 

 must at the same time keep in view the iact as stated by a qualified 

 breeder with the figure system, of the difficulty of contending 

 against reversion. Saunders says : " This tendency to reversion in 

 different breeds of domestic animals when crossed accounts for many 

 of the disappointments which breeders experience in their efforts to 

 improve their stock, and serves greatly to complicate the breeding 

 problem." 



But we are not advocating the figure system with the- object of 

 mating animals of different breeds (although it is difficult to define 

 breed in animals bred -tor the same identical purpose). We are en- 

 deavouring to explain the possibility of arriving at a means by which 

 animals of the same breed; increased in size and improved in appear- 

 ance by being reared in temperate regions, on grassy plains, giving 

 them increased size and strength as compared to their relations reared 

 in a bleak, cold climate on scanty food of poor quality, producing a 

 dwarf frame and scraggy appearance can, with a fair decree of cer- 

 tainty, be mated with extremely beneficial results. 



Processor Low says : " The effect of heat is everywhere observed, 

 as it modifies the secretions which give colors to the skin, and the 

 degree of covering provided for the protection of the body, whether 

 wool or hair." Notwithstanding immense resources at the command 

 of Professor Low from which to draw deductions, it is difficult to 

 reconcile oneself to the correctness of his conclusions with those of 

 historians who state that both black and white cattle were found in 

 their aboriginal state in Scotland, and red cattle and white abounded 

 in Egypt for centuries before the Christian era. 



On the subject of heredity Alfred Russel Wallace says : " The 

 problem is thus stated by Weismann : ' How is it that in the ea-c of 

 all the higher animals and plants a single cell is able to separate itself 

 from amongst the millions of most various kinds of which an organism 

 is composed, and by division and complicated differentiation to recon- 

 struct a new individual with marvellous likeness, unchanged in many 

 cases even throughout whole geological periods ?' Darwin attempted 

 lo solve the problem by his theory of ' Pangenesis,' which supposed 

 that every individual cell in the body give off gemrnules or germs 

 capable of reproducing themselves, and that portions of these germs 

 oi each of the almost infinite number of cells permeate the whole 

 body and become collected in the generative cells, and are thus able to 

 reproduce the whole organism. This theory is felt to be so pon- 

 derously complex and difficult that it has met with no general accept- 

 ance among physiologists. 



"The fact that the germ cells do reproduce with wonderful accuracy 

 not only the general characters of the species, but many of the in- 

 dividual characteristics of the parents or more remote ancestors, and 

 that this process is continued -from generation to generation, can be 

 accounted for, Weismann thinks, only on two suppositions which are 

 physiologically possible. Either the substance of the parent germ 

 cell, after passing through a cycle of changes required for the eon 

 struct ion of a new individual, possesses the capability oi producing 

 anew germ cells identical with those from which that individual was 

 developed, or the new germ cells arise. a> far a- their essentials and 

 characteristic substance is concerned, not at all out of the body of 

 the individual, but direct from the parent germ cell. This latter view 

 Weismann holds to he the correct one. and, on this theory, heredity 



180. 



