THE BOARD OF HEALTH AND TUBERCULOSIS. 
37 
products become better. Milk is richer, meat is finer, beef and 
mutton more tender and juicy, the very soil becomes fat, and 
the tiller grows richer and richer. Generosity to man, beast, and 
soil is profitable. 
“ Breeding animals must be healthy, free from defects of 
form, free from defects of constitution, fro 7 n predisposition to 
disease or weakness^ free from ill te^nper or bad habits^ must 
have sound digestive organs, and they must be capable of 
promptly and perfectly assimilating food. The breeder must 
intimately know the capabilities and characteristics of his breed¬ 
ing animals, so as to be able to adapt them to rear young, which 
shall answer his preconceived wants. He must know that, all 
other things being equal, both parents equally exert the same 
amount of influence on their progeny. This presupposes the 
equal health, vigor, and stamina of both parents. Both should 
therefore be as pure-blooded and perfect as possible. 
“ Because it has been recommended that the male animal 
should be most highly bred, some have attributed to him the 
greater potential share in the procreation. This is only true 
because he is the parent of many annually, while the female is 
the parent of one, or of only a few, as in multiparous animals, dur¬ 
ing the same time. 
“ Though food, climate, soil, exposure, shelter, care, kindness^ 
and some other operating circumstances, may all produce great 
changes, yet, all operating at the same time, and for a long pe¬ 
riod, on the animal and its progeny can not change the species. 
By selection, we, in time, breed small-boned into large-boned 
ones, long-legged ones into short-legged ones ; we can breed 
horned into hornless, and light-bodied ones into heavy-bodied 
animals. In a word, by selection, the breeder can make the 
black white, the white black, the barren fruitful, the fruitful 
barren, the straight deformed, the deformed straight, the perfect 
imperfect, the imperfect perfect; he can breed to a color or to a 
feather ; he can produce a tendency to meat, or to milk, or to but¬ 
ter, or to cheese, or to capability for labor, for speed, for endur¬ 
ance, or in fact, to serve almost any reasonable desire, de- 
