MULTIPLICATION OF BREEDS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1407, 6 April 1912, Page 8

MULTIPLICATION OF BREEDS.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHED STOCKr • " BREEDING. . ,'" After looking over one of our famous hdrds or flocks, or going the vouniLof tho -prize-winners at the TJoyal Show, pays llr. ... U. Hall, A1.A.1'.K.5., iu the "Livestock Journal," any scientific man" wKo has some rudiments of a farmer in himcannut '.but:bo.:amazed by (he perfection.of our ihbdern breeds of livo stock. Lacking/ tho fancier's eye ho may be all the/more impressed by the uniformity of the herd or flock, by the symmetry of th\v individuals and !ho manner in which the ■ili!Sh ; has -bceiv laid oii -the choicest parts of the carcass, or the won! forms u, fleece of a definite type. In the faco of theso nninuiia auv iurthet advance seems inipcssiblc,;.an(t;seientifio research with; such an" end in view a mere wnste of time. But we";,' lin'oW .there.."is 'another, side'. Mo the story; thoprize-winners are. the successful units in a population cf comparative, failures," there , arc , 'defects disguised;y.by the preparation tn« animals have received or unrovpaled in the show-ring, such as weakness of constitution or iiiferior'.ljreedriiig". power';- iii one' way or other there is still infinite scope for improvement even in our best breeds. The next point which strikis tho detached observer, with some astonish.meiit.~is the number of distinct breeds of cattle iind sheep. The Royal Show provides classes .for nn fewer-than eighteen breeds of cattle and twenty ; iivo of sheep',., all originating in the British -Isles, i-rtcl one Know.s that thcreTare many other races of local repute, though they have not yet attained reeognitibh. Now, the "United Kingdom-is not - very big place nor does it possess any ; great extremes of climate, so the question forces itself upon, one whether all ■these breeds arc needed;' cither, as answering each to -some special, purpose or.as -adapted .to a . particular locality.. ilie origin of so many different breeds is easy enough to understand; enterprising men in all parts of . the country have continued .to apply the principles laid down by Bakewell, Colling, Ellman, and tne -other pioneers, and have worked upon ,:their:: country.stuck partly..from--local patriotism and partly with the hope, of ob-taining-rivals to--the Khorthoruor the ' Tsohtlulo-.vn. Tho method of. tho breeder is pretty clearly apprehended; continual selection'to a type carried in the breeder s mind, in-breeding to fix the. type, and then the external pressure of.breed societies and shows to impose- the Mime type on all breeders of that particular race. The process is essentially one of segregation; consciously or unconsciously, the fanciers are.driven to accentuate points of difference between their breed and others, points which, are often of no practical account, sometimes even detrimental. Purity of blood is tlio cardinal principle, from this comes both tho uniformity of the race and its prepotency when crossed on to common country stock.

A Questionable Benefit, Now it is very doubtful whether this multiplication of breeds can continue with any benefit to tlic live stock industry; loc-" ally it niav have a good effect in stimulating particular farmers to pay more attention to tho breeding of thpir stock, but the now races are not likely to lino much outlet in the world at large. --The newlands have all betu peopled with a limited "iiumßF'oT'lirraF of cattle anil sheen, nearly all of British origin; it is .only an OL r ci!.-iional snttlev who, for old association's sa!;L', will venture outside of the great cosmopolitan races like the Hnortlionis the Mei-cfords, the itcrinos, and tho LitCT'uis: After all, there is only room in the world for one Uind ot mill;, ons quality of beef, cue of ■mutton, and pcrhuns three or four of wool; and though in tho old days local races closely snpcialiacd for the particular conditions ot iood or climate- wore thought yet the present 'world-wide distribution ot our great British breed? has demonstrated instead tlieir adaptability to the most varied environment. Moreover, the breeder, is beginning to ask for combinations of qualities hitherto found separately; he demands both meat and milk, both wool and mutton, fine quality associated wuh grazing power and strength of constitution; he is less disposed to accept low fecundity or slow" maturity as necessarily associated with an otherwise valuable race. It would seem thoa that i'nturo progress in breedin" must bo towards association or combination, rather than towards the segrega-tion-that has marked tho past, towards forming composite general-purpose breeds rather than towards splitting up and specialising. Methods of Dealing with tho Problem. _. ■'■ There are two ways in which such a problem, can ho attacked; by tho old method of-selection 'inside on a basis of crossing, has had much light

thrown upon it by science in recent years, and a certain set of laws of inheritance havo been found to bo applicable very closely to plants and to a lesser degree of animals. Put very crudely, Mendel's laws state that characters such as colour, the possession of horns, even the quality of the grain in wheat, aro inherited separately, and. descend without blending in certain numerical ratios to the ofl'sprin:?, so that in some generation of the otisprinj; any ■ desired combination of the qualities possessed.by tlio. parent can be'picked out and fixed. "For example, given a pea that is dwarf; round, seeded, and with never more than five in a pod, and another tall pea, with wrinkled seeds six in the pod, we can bo perfectly certain of obtaining by crossing and selection for a known, number' of generations a race of dwarf peas with six round seeds in the pod. Can wo do the same thiiig with animals; can we promise with the same certainty a race, say, with the coat and hornlessness of tho Aberdeen-Angus, the framo and flesh of the Shorthorns, and the milk of tho Jersey. Science can make no such offer at present; wo do not know whether milk or wool are simple charncters in tho Jlendelinn sense to bo inherited as wholes, and we can bo sure that some of these qualities aro governed bv physiological factors necessarily coupled with other characters as, for example, no crossing could associate the speed of a thoroughbred with a. carthorse frame. The investigator of the laws of heredity is then hardly ready as, yet to come directly to the aid of the. practical breeder; the Mende.lian hypothesis gives, a direction to his research and some promise of a practical outcome, but at iir4 tho scientific man will have to investigate, the nature of such characters as wool, meat, milk, their dependence upon physiological factors, and, above all, the influence and inheritance- of sex. Until some of these points are cleared up there is probably little go,od to be derived from a direct attack upon such problems as tho development of a eomTiosit" race or nno immune from particular diseases. The pioneer work must be done first, unpractical as it may seem. But this does not mean experiments should not be started in breeding domestic animals; only by experiment can any results be obtained, whether for or a»ainst the Mendelian hypothesis; its value to the scientific breeder is that it gives him a suggestion as to how* to work —even if tho work eventually contradicts the sii!rg«stion, it will have made one step towards tho truth.