SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND STOCK-BREEDING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15919, 3 May 1912, Page 8

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND STOCK-BREEDING.

(By A. D. HALL, M.A., F.R.S.) After looking over one of our famous herds or flocks or going the round of tho prize-winners at the Royal Show, any scientific man who has some rudiments of a farmer in him. cannot but be amazed by the perfection of our modern breeds of live stock. Lacking the fancier's eye, he may be all the more impressed by tho uniformity of the herd or flock, by the symmetry of the individuals and- the manner in which tho flesh has boeu laid on the choicest parts of the carcase, or the wool forms a fleece of a definite type. In the face of these animals, any further advance seems impossible, and scientific research with such an end in view a mere waste of time. But we know there is another side to the story; the prise-winners are the successful units in a population of comparative failures, there are defects disguised by the preparation the animals have received or unrevealed in the show ring, such as weakness of constitution or inferior breeding power; in one way or other there is still infinite scope for improvement oven in our best breeds. The next point which strikes; the detached observer with some astonishment is the number of distinct breeds of cattle and sheep. The Royal Show provides classes for no fewer than eighteen breeds of cattle and twenty-five of sheep, all originating in tho British Isles, and one knows that there aro many other races of local repute, though they have not yet attained recognition. Now, the United Kingdom is not a very big place, nor does it possess any great extremes of climate, so the question forces itself upon one whether all these breeds are needed, either as answering each to some special purpose or as adapted to a particular locality. The origin of so many different breeds is easy enough to understand; enterprising men in all parts of the country have continued tc apply the principles laid down by Bakewell, Colling, Ellman, and the other pioneers, and have worked upon their country stock partlv from local patriotism and partly with the hope of obtaining rivals to the Shorthorn or tho Southdown. The method of the brooder 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 imposo tho same 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. Puritv of blood is the cardinal principle,. from this comes both tho uniformity of tho race and its prepotency wh'en crossed on the common country stock.

MULTIPLICATION OP BREEDS. Now it is very doubtful whether this multiplication of breeds can continue with any benefit to the live stock industry; locally it may have a good effect in stimulating particular farmers to pay more attention to the breeding of their stock, but the new races are not likely to find much outlet in the world at large. The new lands have all been peopled with a limited number of breeds of cattle and sheep, nearly all of British origin; it is only an occasional settler who, for old association's sake, will venture outside of the great cosmopolitan races like merinoes, and the Lincolns. After all there is only room in the world for one kind of milk, one quality of beef, one of mutton, and perhaps three or four of wool; and though in the old days local races closely specialised for the particular conditions of food or climate were thought necessary, yet the present world-wide distribution of our great British breeds has demonstrated instead their adaptability to the most varied environment. Moreover j 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 with 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 then that future pro-' gress in breeding must be towards association or combination, rather than towards the segregation that has marked, the past, towards forming, composite general-purpose breeds rather than towards, splitting up and specialising.

METHODS OF DEALING WITH THE PROBLEM.

There are two ways in which such a problem can be attacked —by the old method of selection inside' the breed on a. wider basis, just as certain breeders are now trying to build up a race of milking Shorthorns, or by crossing. Now, crossing, which is altogether repugnant to tn© ideas of a fancier, though, of course, many a breed lias been built up 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 has been found to be applicable very closely to plants and in a lesser degree to animals. Put very crudely, Mendel's laws state that characters such as colour, the possession of horn:-:, even the quality of the grain in wheat, are inherited separately and descend without blending in certain numerical ratios to the offspring, so that in some feneration of the offspring any desired combination of the qualities possessed by the parent carl be picked out and fixed. For example, given a pea that is a dwarf roundseeded, and with never more than fivo 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 well known number of generations a race of dwarf peas with six round seeds in the. pod. Can wo do the same thing witti animals? Can we promise with the same certainty a race, say, with the coat and horjilessness of the Aberdeen-Angus, the frame and flesh of the Shorthorns and the milk of the Jersey. Science can make no such offer at present. We do not know whether milk or wool are simple characters in the Mendelian sense to be inherited as wholes, and we can be sure that some of these qualities are governed bv physiological factors necessarily coupled with other characters, as, ior examnle, no crossing could associate the speed of a thoroughbred with a cart-horse frame. The investigator of the laws of heredity is then hardly ready as yet to come directly to tr iv of tlle Poetical breeder; the Mendelian hypothesis gives a direction to his research and some promise of a practical outcome, but first the 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 good to be derived from a direct attack upon such problems as the development or a composite race or one immune from particular diseases. The nioneer work : «ust 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 against the Mendelian hypothesis ; its value to the scientific breeder is that it gives him a suggestion as to how to work—even if the work eventually contradicts the suggestion, it will have made one step towards the truth

Kl "g Albert of Belgium is an experimenter in wireless telegraphy and tole- ] 3ho ">. At Laeken he has installed m his palace a complete equipment tor experiments in this modern development of science.