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Show POULTRY 1 BREEDING FOR RESULTS. C. S. Gorlinc. It is believed that in this day and age we arc just beginning to learn the rudiments of scientific breeding. The power of heredity, like that of electricity, is just beginning to be understood un-derstood and utilized. Scientists the world over are studying and experimenting. experi-menting. To Darwin is due the honor hon-or of first awakening the world to the possibilities of inheritance in animals and plants. Since that awakening scores of the brightest scientific minds have sought to solve that problem of nature. So much has been accomplished accom-plished in the improvement of plants and animals by cross pollcnization and line-breeding and so intense has become be-come the general interest in such matters that the funny man has had to have his say in order to prevent these practical investigators from bo-coming bo-coming over sanguine as to what may or may not be accomplished. For instance, he suggests that by crossing the spawn of a frog and a trout and subsequent inbreeding we may produce pro-duce a hybrid trout with lungs and rudimentary legs that may he reared on land and produced in large numbers num-bers for market purposes. He solemnly solemn-ly asks if a cross between rye and mint will not produce a mint julep, nnd he quavcringly hopes no one will succeed in crossing a bull and a hog lest the market be over glutted with ham monstrosities, but modestly suggests sug-gests that it would be a great thing for humanity to cross the bee and the firefly nnd so produce a hybrid bee with a light in order that it may work by night as well as by day, and what a great saving it would be of time and money and iron if we could1 but produce pro-duce a cross between the spider and the wirevorm that would spin woven-wirc woven-wirc fenr and thus prevent the total to-tal exhaustion of our iron mines, and last, but notloast, he modestly suggests the utility of a cross between be-tween the potato and onion to pro duce a hybrid with the power to make its eyes weep water for its own use, thus avoiding the expense of water and irrigating ditches in the arid regions. re-gions. However, in all seriousness, much has been done and very much mor will be accomplished' in the near future by the scientific direction of the inherent life forces as the laws of heredity become better known. It is believed that every species is amenable amen-able to improvement .by pedigree breeding; that every species will produce pro-duce individuals possessing more than average merit and that by careful selection se-lection and restriction, other individuals indi-viduals of rare ccntgencr (breeding value) qualities may be produced. After Darwin, the more prominent investigators along these lines wcr Landois, Friendcnthal, Grucnbaum, Nuttall, De Vrics, the latter having discovered and made known the celebrated cele-brated theory of Grcgor Mendel, a teacher of physics, in Gratz, Germany. Ger-many. Mendel having become interested inter-ested in the experiments of Darwin, set iibout a line of investigations for himself and discovered the laws of heredity that have done so much to modify the methods of modern breeders. breed-ers. The Mendel experiments were made upon plants, but it is now well known that the same laws that govern the production of plants apply equally to the production of animals and birds. These 'experiments have shown that certain .characteristics, as color, form, type, etc., arc unit-characters which carry the ancestral blood and which will be reproduced in the individual indi-vidual in specific characteristics; that in the progeny of a cross, there arc always two opposing unit-characters from different parents of the cross and that these unit-characters coinc into conflict in the formation of the embryo of the progeny and battle for supremacy in the same manner that two-species reared in restricted quarters quar-ters contest for food and light and with the same result always the survival sur-vival of the fittest in that the stronger, strong-er, or recessive characteristic in the cr, of recessive characteristic in the progeny, just as we have seen the dominant white race oppose and: supplant sup-plant the recessive red race in America. Ameri-ca. The progeny of the first generation genera-tion was not distinguishable from the pure bred of the one parent, which possessed the dominating characteristic. character-istic. When the hybrids were crossed among themselves, there was no uniform uni-form offspring, but the two distinct types, one with the recessive and one with the dominating characteristic now appeared. In the cross inter se, when the number was sufficiently large, the number of hybrids with the recessive characteristic was always one to three of those with the dominating domi-nating characteristic. The value ot the Mendel theory lies in the fact that it has made it possible to predict the results of hybridizations numerically. num-erically. In breeding for results, many are called, but few arc chosen. Out of the thousands produced, "but a hundred arc selected, hence the term ccntgcncr quality, which means one hundred out of a generation. Of the ccntgcncr selection, perhaps one rare form with heredity showing strongest in the lines in which improvement is desired may be produced and a cross is effected with the next best specimen, speci-men, which may be obtained1 from widely separated sources, thus creating creat-ing new and more pronounced variations. varia-tions. The progeny of this cross will vary more widely than the progeny of forms more closely related. Again the exceptional individuals arc selected select-ed and tested with the hope of securing se-curing one of unusual and pronounced sircdf of rarer ccntgcncr quality than that possessed by cither of the parents par-ents of the cross. In this manner has been created both plants and animals ani-mals that have in them a combination combina-tion of the most desired characteristics characteris-tics of the parent stocks and possess the valuable power of transmitting these rare qualities to their descend-ents. descend-ents. Of the thousands of superior specimens selected, only one may stand the test and be found imbued with the characteristic of stable hcri-dity hcri-dity along the line desired Perhaps one generation in ten may produce an individual of phcnominal worth that is, but one out of many thousands and when that one is found, it alone is retained and all the others arc discarded. dis-carded. Thus, the power of the rare individual to beget valuable progeny that will in turn transmit these valuable valu-able characteristics in a nvorc intense form to subsequent progeny has come to be the central idea amongst cx- I perienced and capable breeders in breeding for results. . o |