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PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
experiment stations that have sprung up within twenty-five years in 
the United States, and the numerous similar institutions that dot the 
face of the European continent. We need more than Masters of 
Art : captains of industry — men who by education and training are 
capable of leading the people in the thought and action which centre 
in productive enterprise. To imbue the youth of the colony with this 
spirit of modern times, to enlist their exuberant energies in the great 
work of developing the abounding resources of the colony, is worth 
every sacrifice that it may cost individual or nation. Without the aid 
of young Queensland, our position in this merciless competition of 
modern trade will not be an enviable one. 
5.— THE SCIENCE OF STOCK-BREEDING. 
By C. C. MA1R. 
When left without man’s interference Nature culls or selects only 
in order to propagate animals with strong vitality, or the fittest to 
survive under their conditions of life, and has thus evolved and 
established breeds and types with strong prepotency specially adopted 
to their surroundings. When man takes control of the breeding of 
animals he selects with a view to making them more profitable for 
specific purposes, such as milk, meat, wool, swiftness, endurance, or 
fancy. There are some well-known principles which experience has 
established for guidance in the moulding of any type of animal a t 
breeder may conceive as bis ideal. The chief of these is heredity— 
like producing like. This principle of like producing like applies 
more to family types or ancestry than to individual parentage. 
Notwithstanding strong heredity there is always great variety, no two 
animals or blades of grass being exactly alike, and this variability 
gives plasticity and enables the breeder to mould a type of animals, 
by persistently culling off from breeding those least resembling the 
ideal he aims at giving form to, and breeding only from those most 
resembling his ideal. By continuing for generations thus persistently 
working for his ideal by selection and treatment, the breeder may 
gradually approach his conception of a perfect animal for the purpose 
for which he is breeding, but will not attain it, as his ideal will 
improve with experience, his taste gradually getting more and more 
critical. 
In a few generations a certain amount of fixity of type ami 
family characteristics with some prepotency will be established, if 1 
mating together those most resembling the ideal, and consequently like 
each other, is persistently adhered to. Fixity of type and prepotency 
cannot be established while crossing or corrective measures with dis- 
similar improved and prepotent breeds are resorted to. Fixity of type 
and prepotency in improved breeds is really what constitutes purity ot 
blood, as it is a contradiction of terms to sav that any improved breed 
is literally the original unimproved native type, the intention and 
purpose of improving being to eliminate all undesirable properties ot ' 
the original breed, and to cultivate, foster, and fix those of economic 
value either for profit or pleasure. 
