Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/326

322 agricultural school supported by public money, I can imagine much shaking of heads on the county council governing that institution, and yet it is no longer in dispute that he provided the one bit of solid discovery upon which all breeding practise will henceforth be based.

Everywhere the same need for accurate knowledge is apparent. I suppose horse-breeding is an art which has by the application of common sense and great experience been carried to about as high a point of perfection as any. Yet even here I have seen a mistake made which is obvious to any one accustomed to analytical breeding. Among a number of stallions provided at great expense to improve the breed of horses in a certain district was one which was shown me as something of a curiosity. This particular animal had been bred by one of the provided stallions out of an indifferent country mare. It had been kept as an unusually good-looking colt, and was now traveling the country as a breeding stallion, under the highest auspices. I thought to myself that if such a practise is sanctioned by breeding acumen and common sense, science is not after all so very ambitious if she aspires to do rather better. The breeder has continually to remind himself that it is not what the animal or plant looks that matters, but what it is. Analysis has taught us to realize, first, that each animal and plant is a double structure, and next that the appearance may show only half its composition.

With respect to the inheritance of many physiological qualities of divers kinds we have made at least a beginning of knowledge, but there is one class of phenomena as yet almost untouched. This is the miscellaneous group of attributes which are usually measured in terms of size, fertility, yield and the like. This group of characters has more than common significance to the practical man. Analysis of them can nevertheless only become possible when pure science has progressed far beyond the point yet reached.

I know few lines of pure research more attractive and at the same time more likely to lead to economic results than an investigation of the nature of variation in size of the whole organism or of its parts. By what factors is it caused? By what steps does it proceed? By what limitations is it beset? In illustration of the application of these questions I may refer to a variety of topics that have been lately brought to my notice. In the case of merino sheep I have been asked by an Australian breeder whether it is possible to combine the optimum length of wool with the optimum fineness and the right degree of crimping. I have to reply that absolutely nothing is yet known for certain as to the physiological factors determining the length or the fineness of wool. The crimping of the fibers is an expression of the fact that each particular hair is curved, and if free and untwisted would form a corkscrew spiral, but as to the genetics of curly hair even in man very little