Biological Motor Cars

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 3, 14 July 1939, Page 11

Biological Motor Cars

Animals, as most farmers know, can not yet be built to order. The day is coming when they will be; but in the meantime even the geneticists admit that cows and sheep and pigs and horses as. you like them are merely a biological dream. Here are some recent remarks from a broadcast to English tarmers by A. D. Buchanan Smith, Lecturer in Animal Genetics at Edinburgh University: "T am supposed to be talking here of the science of heredity. What part has it played in the production of our present flocks and herds? Quite frankly, ‘it has played but a small part. You see, the art of animal breeding has been so long established, the breeders are so proficient in that art and the science is so young that we have never really got going. Doubtless many of you read recently of the English Shorthorn cow, Cherry, which is the first cow in the world to have given a yield of 4,000 gallons of milk in one year. She is the outstanding example of the art of breeding. But I feel that it is safe to say that any more substantial improvement will only take place with the application of the science of heredity. The dairy cow is the biological motor car. We can measure her performance just as we can measure the performance of Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird or Captain Eyston’s Thunderbolt-not quite so accurately, but it is still measureable; and as Lord Kelvin once said, ‘measurement is the fundamental *fact of science.’ So just as you can study the engine of the Thunderbolt, so we are now studying the mechanism of milk secretion of the high-yielding dairy cow. And just as there is a delicate balance between the different components of the engine of the Thunderbolt, so is there between the various organs of Cherry. Each component of the engine of the dairy cow must be strong enough to do its job in relation to the other organs or components. But, whereas in the motor car you can accomplish this by substituting a different jet on the carburettor, or

something like that, in the dairy cow we can only get it by scientific selection, using all we know of the science of heredity to guide us in our work. Just as the Thunderbolt is a freak car, so is Cherry a freak cow. Both are masterpieces and good adver-

tising for Great Britain. But what most motorists want is a robust, no-trouble family car which goes forty miles to the gallon; and similarly what most dairy farmers want is a robust type of reliability cow that gives the maximum amount of milk for the smallest consumption of food."