CHAPTER XIV 
PRACTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC BREEDING 
Science has been defined as the “know how” and art as the 
“do how.” The man who works by art depends upon an un- 
conscious judgment which is inborn or is acquired by long 
practice. The man who works by science may also have this 
artistic taste, but he tests its dicta by comparison with known 
facts and principles. The scientist not only lookes before he 
leaps, but measures the distance and. knows exactly where he 
is going to land. 
Breeding has for centuries been an art, but the science of 
breeding is so new as to seem a mass of contradictions to all 
except those familiar with the maze of mathematics and 
biology by which the barn-yard facts must find their ultimate 
explanation. The science of breeding may in the future bring 
about that which would now seem miraculous, but it is the 
ancient art of breeding that is and will for years continue to 
be the means by which the poultry fancier will achieve his 
results. 
In a volume the chief aim of which is to place the poultry 
industry, which is now conducted as an art, in the realm of 
technical science, it might seem proper to devote considerable 
space to the subject of breeding. That I shall not do so, is for 
the reason that while theoretically I recognize the important 
part that breeding plays in all animal production, for the prac- 
tical proposition of producing poultry products at the lowest 
possible cost, a knowledge of the technical science of breed- 
ing is unessential and may, by diverting the poultryman’s time 
to unprofitable efforts, prove an actual handicap. 
For the show room breeder the new science of breeding is 
too undeveloped to be of immediate service, or I had better 
say, the show room requisites are too complicated for theo- 
retical breeding to promise results. For the commercial poul- 
tryman, I shall review what has been accomplished and state 
briefly the theories upon which contemplated work is based. 
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