610 GENETICS IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE 
circle of those who begin to appreciate the significance of those laws, 
it must inevitably follow that general breeding practice will thereby be 
gradually raised. It is not possible for a geneticist, however broad 
his knowledge, to map out rules of procedure in breeding operations such 
that success must inevitably follow their application. Such procedure 
is not to be commended; it is not even scientific, by very nature. For 
intelligent application of the principles of genetics, which is the ideal 
of the scientific animal breeder, presupposes a knowledge of such prin- 
Fic. 239.—Genetics laboratory (for general course) College of Agriculture, University of 
California. ; 
ciples; the service of the geneticist, therefore, should be to determine 
principles and to indicate insofar as may lie within his power the signifi- 
cance of these principles. 
It is in this direction that the study of genetics is not only advisable 
but needful, for it provides as it were the framework to which the breeder 
may add the necessary empirical elements for the construction of his 
finished plan of procedure. And he will find as he becomes more and 
more familiar with that framework that it is not a mere indifferent 
edifice to which he may attach things here and there as convenience 
dictates, but that it is a codrdinated and interrelated structure which 
provides definite places for different kinds of things, so that when 
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