110 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



must improve this machine and estabHsh a reHable source of 

 ef^cient cows or go out of business. We should campaign the 

 state for the rational breeding of the most effective machine 

 in existence for the production of human food — the efficient 

 dairy cow. 



I truly wish that this Association would get behind the 

 proportion and justify its exhistence by hastening the final and 

 spee-jy departure of the inefficient cow. 



We may say we have here a fine looking Shorthorn steer 

 or cow, and there in the field are his 2000 ancestors. What would 

 they look like? Some red, white, brindle, some roan, all the 

 breeders favors from all time. Supposing the parents were 

 lx)ih red cattle. There are no red in the ancestry back of them, 

 but they are red themselves. What are the chances that the 

 ..Ives will be red? Fifty out of every hundred. You ought to 

 come out right about half the time. An excellent good looking 

 sire here and a good cow and breed them together. Keep one 

 animal always in service and the thing takes care of itself, and 

 have that one good. 



DISCUSSION. 



Q : — Do you mean. Professor, that you maintain the vital- 

 ity of the herd by that method? 



A: — Yes sir, it has been done over and over again. We 

 are talking of the lifetime of a single individual. 



The offspring is often not like the parent. It is the same 

 in humans. You go back to the country you have left since boy- 

 hood, and you often mistake little children for their fathers 

 and mothers who went to school to you, over and over again, 

 so close is the resemblance, and again, you would never suspect 

 there was any blood between the two. It is how much father and 

 how much mother ancestry. I will give you the law of ancestr}'- 

 of heredity that gives one the proportion which we inherit from 

 the parents and grandparents and so on back. We have a few 

 ancestors. Go back one generation, four, another, eight, another, 

 sixteen, and so on back to 200 ancestors within ten generations. 

 There would be some srood and some not. I wouldn't want 



