564 The American Naturalist. [July, 
while the importance of the improvement of the live stock of 
the farm is wholly ignored ; and to remind breeders that they 
are fully warranted in claiming that improved animals are 
entitled to the first place among the means of an improved 
agriculture, as machines for manufacturing the crops grown 
on the farm into marketable products. 
The most serious obstacles to the progress of agriculture at 
the present time arise from the one-sided and misleading 
statements that are made in the name of science by those who 
have but a superficial knowledge of Nature’s laws, and their 
intimate relations to farm practice. The experiment station 
reports, on the feeding of animals, fail to give a full statement 
of all of the factors that may influence the results, and too 
often the record is made to conform to hasty assumptions, or 
false theories, so that it is difficult to find a grain of truth in 
the mass of chaff that is scattered broadcast over the coun- 
try. 
As the remarkable progress made in other productive 
industries has been largely owing to improvements in machin- 
ery, so progress in agriculture must depend, to a great extent. 
at least, upon the further improvement of the animal machines 
that are so essential to success in the business of farming, and 
we must look to the breeders of the pure breeds tó accomplish 
this desirable object. 
It will not answer to rest satisfied with the present high 
development of the pure breeds and their more general diffu- 
sion on the farms of the country, but the aim of every intelli- 
gent breeder must be to still further increase their useful 
qualities in special directions. Notwithstanding the decided 
superiority of the pure breeds over the average farm stock, 
there is still a wide margin for improvement, asthere are good 
reasons for believing that even the best animals do not utilize 
more than one-half of the available energy of their food in use- 
ful work. 
The largest profit can only be realized with animals that 
have the ability to consume and utilize in useful work, an 
amount of food considerably in excess of what is required in 
the needed repairs of the system. This involves severe work, 
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