CONCLUDING REMARKS 611 
they are fitted in their proper places they tend that much to add to the 
completeness and unity of the whole structure. It is a fortunate breeder 
who is able to approach his problems from such a point of view. 
The Need of Other Knowledge.—Proficiency at any sort of game may 
be gained only by practising the game. No amount of reading and 
study of methods of play will suffice to make a good card player or a 
billiardist; 1t is required that the player be able to put the principles 
to effective use if he would achieve any measure of success. It is not 
far different in the practice of animal breeding. Genetics provides 
merely the principles of a game, the effective employment of those 
principles necessitates a thoroughly grounded knowledge of a wide range 
of matters pertaining to the technique of rearing, training, mating, and 
what not of the particular type of animal which is being bred. We 
might say somewhat enigmatically that successful animal breeding 
requires a knowledge both of principles and principals. He who has 
studied genetics has only begun the study of the broader subject of 
animal breeding. Ordinarily it would be a much safer procedure to 
entrust the future of a carefully built-up herd of pure-bred livestock to 
the sympathetic care of the herdsman trained in the old school rather 
than to the most thoroughly trained genetic investigator in the land. 
For after all success in animal breeding depends very largely upon 
the ability of the breeder to build up in his mind an ideal type; and there 
is NO more reason or assurance that such a type will arise full-formed in 
the mind of the breeder than that any other good thing may be obtained 
without effort. Here indeed is a rare opportunity for good sound judg- 
ment to work toward a definitely appointed end. For the ideal type of 
the breeder will in a sense be a composite of many types, in determining 
which the particular force of any one factor must be weighed with con- 
summate skill. Thus to take a single illustration, that of the ideal 
type of beef Shorthorn, we may point out some of the types which must 
be welded so to speak into one. There is first the market type of beef 
cattle; broad, deep, built upon the plan of the parallelogram, carrying a 
maximum percentage of high priced cuts, and a minimum percentage 
of offal. In the second place we may consider the feeder’s type of beef 
cattle. He desires an animal which will lay on flesh rapidly and econom- 
ically. Consequently he looks for a bright and alert, but not overly 
active disposition, and a high degree of functional excellence in the 
digestive system and body in general, such that the animal will consume 
a maximum amount of food and convert it into flesh of the propei quality. 
Perhaps as a slight compensatory allowance here the feeder permits a 
slight increase in volume of digestive and other vital organs with a 
consequent increase in percentage of offal for the sake of more economical 
gains. In the third place we must consider the breeders’ type of beef 
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