730 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
-we may form some idea of what breeds are most likely to suit par- 
ticular localities in these colonies; but it is questionable if these 
breeds can be profitably cultivated if we persistently adhere to the 
old notions of what are the correct and necessary characteristics of 
particular breeds, and not encourage modifications suitable to local 
conditions and the consumers’ demands. In many districts, particu- 
larly in regard to sheep, the breeder will with advantage study the 
style of animal and wool that the country tends to produce, and 
cultivate and improve on the lines so indicated, thus saving the 
expense of time after time purchasing improved blood in the attempt 
to keep them to a type not suitable to their surroundings. 
In choosing highly bred animals with recorded pedigree for the 
purpose of improving stock, it is more difficult to find out if the fixed 
characteristics and properties are truly improvements than to find out 
the amount of purity (fixity) or prepotency, as this can be learned 
from truthful pedigrees, 'ilie greater the prepotency, high breeding, 
or purity, the more dangerous constitutional weakness or any faul t is, 
siucc prepotency is equally powerful in reproducing good and bad 
qualities. Males or females with long unbroken recorded pedigrees, 
indicating great fixity of type, may, through injudicious treatment, 
have become so constitutionally weak that it would be ruinous to 
use them to stamp their likeness on any stock. To this breeding from 
animals of high-class blood and great prepotency, but of low consti- 
tutional vigour, may in a measure he attributed many of the diseases 
and failures so prevalent. In stud stock close culling is particularly 
necessary in order to maintain constitutional vigour. 
The chief thing to aim at in breeding being constitutional strength 
or symmetry, the even balancing or just proportioning of all the animal 
organs and faculties is all-important, so that it is doubtful if one who has 
not the natural gift of a true eye, witli opportunities of cultivating it 
on good models, can be a judge or successful improver of stock. A true 
eve in breeding may be said to be as necessary as a true ear for music. 
Fitness to survive through constitutional vigour or vitality being 
thus the first principle in improvement, it is necessary for their highest 
and most profitable development that animals never get reduced in 
vitality from any cause whatever, and that they never suffer from 
pampering or want of abundant health-giving exercise. Want of 
natural exercise or disuse of particular organs induces shrinkage, 
deformity, and decay in these organs, and if conditions continue 
favourable for many generations to this state, these deformities 
eventually become constitutional, and in highly bred or highly pre- 
potent stock they will be much intensified by heredity. Not only are 
the disused organs changed, but in the attempt to maintain harmony 
and symmetry many other organs will be modified so as to fit in with 
the alteration. If from disuse an organ does not demand sustenance, 
the supply eventually ceases. 
As we have great natural advantages in mildness of climate and 
richness of pasture for the production of healthy, vigorous stock, the 
greater number of our domestic animals are, comparatively speaking, 
left to take care of themselves. When they are thus without man s 
assistance, Nature kills off all weak or abnormal developments in 
culling for the survival of the fittest or those possessing constitutional 
strength. Man, having taken control of their breeding, has trained 
