Principles of breeding

Excerpt from Principles of Breeding: A Treatise on Thremmatology or the Principles and Practices Involved in the Economic Improvement of Domesticated Animals and Plants Two classes of people have been in mind in the preparation of this text, viz. the student of agriculture in the college and experiment station and the practical breeder upon the farm. Both need to know all that evolution has to teach of methods that may be employed in still further adapting to our needs such animals and plants as have been domesticated because of their valuable natural qualities. The general purpose has been first of all to define the problems involved in animal and plant improvement; to free the subject from the prejudice and tradition that have always befogged it; to bring to the study whatever facts are fully known to biological science; to recognize and define somewhat clearly the present limitations of knowledge, and to indicate as well as may be the directions from which further and much-needed light is most likely to come. I DEGREESst of all and more than all, it has been the purpose to encourage, and if possible induce, more exact methods of study and of practice than have hitherto characterized this branch of agricultural science. It is yet too early to prepare an ideal treatise upon this most intricate subject, and no one is more conscious than the author of the many deficiencies and shortcomings of this attempt. No new theories of evolution are proposed.