314 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY . 
Afternoon Session. 
Convention met. Secretary Field in the chair. 
2 P. M. 
SWINE. 
BY HON. B. U. STRONG, SPRING GREEN. 
There is no class of farm stock in which there is so wide a 
range between the good and the poor, the profitable and the un¬ 
profitable, as the class I am to speak of to-day. But it is not my 
province to enter into any lengthy statement of the value of the 
many eminent breeds in the country, but rather to endeavor to 
impress upon the minds of those who breed, in the anticipation of 
profit or to improve their stock, that to attain success we must 
breed from those families whose marked superiority is apparent in 
the power to transmit their peculiarities of character to their off¬ 
spring. If we wish to breed a standard hog, as reported by the 
committee at the National Convention of Swine Breeders at In¬ 
dianapolis, we should breed with the desired object in view ; we 
should look for the parent boar coming the nearest this standard, 
and breed from him. I am not here to advocate this standard of 
hogs, or any particular breed, but to tell what I know about swine 
and how to improve the breed, and shall keep close to facts as I 
understand them. My observation teaches me that the most im¬ 
portant part of our subject to consider, is the power of the parent 
to transmit its peculiarities of character to its progeny. As one 
instance in support of this power of transmission, take the evi¬ 
dence of the celebrated Eclipse stock of horses, how famous they 
were to impart their valuable characteristics upon their progeny, 
but no more so than the celebrated Sir Henry and other cele¬ 
brated sires. Further evidence is seen in the uniformity of color 
transmitted by the Devon sire and the Short Horn, imparting 
equally as strong their marked peculiarities of the breed, also on 
through all the different breeds of animals, not even varying in 
any instance, but following out that great fundamental principle 
that “like produces like.” I might well add, it would be unfor¬ 
tunate if it were not so. 
