IMPROVEMENT BY BREEDING SKILL.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 359, 13 April 1889, Page 3

IMPROVEMENT BY BREEDING SKILL.

"What is improvement?" asks Mr William Housrnan in the Live Stock Journal. The wild cattle which Julius Csssar found in Gaul, the wild cabbie at present existing, and all the varieties of wild cattle which evor have existed at any period of the world's history, upon any part of the earth, may be reasonably regarded as each best for the conditions oflu'^ in which each ex- j sts, or has existed. Nau * •>. we say (personifying the influences whicw we can trace in their effects, and reverently acknowledging the mystery beyond our reach), has fitted each creature for uhe purpose of its creation. Each species, adapting itself to its surroundings, is the best in the world for its place. It has grown to its circumstances, and if they have altered, the species have alteredtoo. Man takes in hand, tames, and thoroughly alters the wild species he finds in natural conditions of life. Is his alteration improvement or not improvement ? So far as by his skill he gets a larger return from the stock he rears for the coat of time, labour, and money expended, ho dees effect improvement, although that improvement may unfit his stock for the conditions in which their wild progenitors lived. But there are many degrees of impioyement, depending upon the measures of skill, and the amount of care with which domesticated animals are bred. From one original race may spring, according to the system, or want of system, of different breeders, breeds characterised by enormous growth of flesh, ' breeds prodigious in daiiy produce, and mongrel weeds, from 'which neithec niilk nor beef can be got in profitable quantity. We can scarcely call these improvements upon the wild stock. Compai'ison between them and specimens of the wild race from which they are derived, if they could be brought side by side, would the more strongly show, no doubt, the depth of their degeneracy. But place the wild specimens beside good representative specimens of the best breeds, and we should see at once wherein man's skill has prevailed. That the gain for man's purposes is immense, we cannot for one moment deny. Yet something has been sacrificed to obtain it. We cannot keep all the properties of the wild race in perfection, and at the same time heap on beef or vastly increase the yield of milk. It is also as certain that we cannot reach permanent perfection in the union of diverse meritsamongdomesticaoed breeds. Wemust be content to give and take when we try our hands at improvement for special purposes. We may havea capital "all-round" breed, or " general purposes " breed, but it will not reach the top of improvement in any one direction. If our aim be for miJk and beef, we may succeed in developing both to an extraordinary extent. Still, the balance will be difficult to keep true. Somo of the offspring of our stock will vary from the average in the direction of beef, others in ohe direction of milk, and if we want to keep the medium, we must forego the extremes. In that case we must either cast off, or else interbreed, our heaviest feeding and deepest milking stock, so as to constantly lessen the tendency to increase of beef on the one hand, and increase of milk on the other. Breeding from our selected best milkers and the sons of cows of their own class, we should assuredly increase the dairy properties and to a proportionate extent lose flesh ; and breeding from the beef-makers alone we should go forward in the direction of beef and lose much of the milk. It may be said, and is said, with much truth, that great dairy properties may be presenb where there is also a tendency to rapid and abundant flesh-making ; that you have, for instance, an evccllent dairy cow which, when fed off, at last makes a most profitable return to the grazier and pleases the butcher and his customers besides. Such animals, indeed, are common enough in districts where bxeeding for general pur-" poses is skilfully practised, bub they do not supply evidence contradictory of the necessity of sticking bo one object if you want perfection in any one property. They rather suggest what may be done by repeated blendings of properties which cannot permanently co-exist without more or leas impairing one another. They are not, it is here suggested, examples of permanent results, butof results which may be obtained in perpetuity by fresh combinations. Although they may be of pure breed, the system on which they are bred is of the essence of cross-breeding.