720 
BREEDING OF FARM STOCK. 
although its high price necessarily restricts its employ¬ 
ment. 
We may, hereafter, touch upon the composition and com¬ 
parative feeding properties of the oil-cakes obtained from 
many of these seeds, whether home-made or imported .—The 
Farmer’s Magazine. 
THE PRINCIPLES WHICH REGULATE THE BREEDING OF 
FARM-STOCK. 
By Henry Tanner, M.R.A.C., Professor of Agriculture 
and Rural Economy, Queen’s College, Birmingham. 
Prize Essay. 
The careful observer of nature has ample proof that her 
works are all carried out in accordance with fixed rules, and 
no one has better opportunities for securing this evidence 
than the agriculturist. A modification of circumstances may 
cause a variation in the results; still there is, throughout his 
experience, a thread of evidence which proves the existence 
of established laws. The importance of farm-stock is daily 
becoming more fully recognised, and truths applicable to the 
whole class can be traced out and determined most satisfac¬ 
torily by attention to individual specimens. The variation 
in the feeding capabilities of different animals is a fact which 
needs not to be enlarged upon, for every farmer knows that 
whilst some animals are such good feeders that they pay by 
an increase of weight for all the food which they consume, 
others for the purpose of fattening would be dear as a gift. 
Assuming, then, that such a difference exists, I propose to 
show and explain, as briefly as possible, the rules which 
govern the results required and the system to be followed in 
putting them in practice. 
It materially lessens our difficulty to know that in the 
breeding of all varieties of farm-stock—cattle, sheep, pigs, 
&c.—the results seem uniformly to follow the same fixed but 
simple laws. It is an old and approved maxim that ‘Hike 
produces like but this rule, though generally true, may be 
misapplied, when the error will be demonstrated by the con¬ 
tradictory evidence of practice and experience. If an animal 
is capable of transmitting any character to its offspring, it 
must possess that which it conveys, although at times quali- 
