542 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. SXXVII. No. 954 



and plants now get, there is every reason 

 to believe that they would have equalled or 

 surpassed our finest specimens of to-day. 

 Some specific examples may be cited. Mr. 

 Geo. A. Scott," of Nashville, Tenn., had in 

 1863 "a common scrub cow" which pro- 

 duced in one year 1,4474 gallons of milk. 

 Taking the weight of one quart of milk at 

 2.15 lbs. as sufficiently close for practical 

 purposes, this gives a record of 12,448.5 lbs. 

 of milk for the year. This is a respectable 

 figure even for present standards. Going 

 back a half century earlier we have the 

 record of a Sussex cow'': "a cow not of 

 either of the highest improved English 

 breeds — long horns or short horns; but of 

 the proper old Sussex breed. ' ' The follow- 

 ing record is of her production in five suc- 

 cessive years beginning in 1805. I have 

 transposed quarts to pounds by the use of 

 the factor given above — 2.15. 



Weeks in Lbs. o£ Lbs. of 



Milk Milk Butter 



First year 48 10,580.2 540 



Second year 45* 8,894.6 450 



Third year 511 12,366.8 675 



Fourth year 42i 9,070.9 466 



Fifth year 48 11,543.4 594 



Facts of the same sort are at hand for 

 crops. Justin Ely, Esq., of West Spring- 

 field, Mass., in 1816, raised 50 bushels of 

 wheat to the acre. Col. Jas. Valentine, of 

 Hopkinton, raised 128 bushels of "Indian 

 corn" to the acre. Payson "Williams, Esq., 

 of Fitehburg, raised 614 bushels of pota- 

 toes to the acre, and James Whitton, Esq., 

 of Lee, raised 85 bushels of oats to the acre. 

 The average yield of oats to-day is approxi- 

 mately 36 bushels to the acre. The IMaine 

 Agricultviral Experiment Station, in its 

 tests of the best commercial varieties of 



' The Cultivator and Country Gentleman, Vol. 

 28, p. 401, 1866. 



'Massachusetts Agricultural Eepository and 

 Journal, Vol. IV., No. 4. Cf. also New England 

 Farmer, Vol. III., p. 305, 1825. 



oats procurable in this country and Eu- 

 rope, has never been able to obtain a yield 

 per acre of more than 76 bushels. 



I have elsewhere discussed records of egg 

 production in poultry in this connection. 

 From 1836 there is an authentic record of 

 crested Polish fowls producing an average 

 of 175 eggs each per year. This was long 

 before the trapnest had been discovered. 



Too much stress, of course, should not be 

 laid on such examples as these. They do 

 not indicate that there has been no advance 

 made by the breeder in the qualities of 

 domesticated animals and plants during 

 the last centurj"-. The average quality of 

 live stock and of crop plants is constantly 

 improving, not only as a result of breeding, 

 but also because of better and more widely 

 disseminated knowledge of how to provide 

 the food and environmental conditions best 

 suited to bring to full expression the poten- 

 tial hereditary capabilities* of the individ- 

 ual. I think that such records, however, 

 do fairly indicate that in the practise of 

 the art of breeding there has been no such 

 marked fundamental advance in recent 

 years as there has been in the science of 

 genetics. By empirical methods man has 

 been steadily improving the quality of live 

 stock for centuries past, and long ago a 

 relatively high level was reached by the 

 most skillful breeders. 



Purely empirical methods are wasteful 

 and slow in operation, but they may attain 

 excellent results. "When they are success- 

 ful it is obviously because at just that 

 point the practise was, by chance, in exact 

 conformity with the underlying principle 

 or law concerned. More generally it may 

 be said that all progressive success of em- 



* Consider in this connection the practises of the 

 real expert in making world's records for milk 

 and butter fat production in the seven- and thirty- 

 day advanced registry tests of the Holstein- 

 Friesian breed. 



