I LOVE lovelove LOVE Google Books project for putting so many amazing old books pertaining to animal husbandry online. It's an unbelievable resource we should all be eating up!
Here's my latest find that's keeping me busy today:
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA...aZAAAAIAAJ&ots=EOl7p20IbU#v=onepage&q&f=false
The essay I'm reading now is page 34, THE PRODUCTION AND FIXATION OF NEW BREEDS. By W. E. Castle, Assistant Professor of Zoology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.
This report is from a genetics conference in 1907. The whole document is chock full of awesome stuff! I will be back to this thread after I read some more things, and will probably have some discussion points.
Here's the intro to the essay:
Here's my latest find that's keeping me busy today:
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA...aZAAAAIAAJ&ots=EOl7p20IbU#v=onepage&q&f=false
The essay I'm reading now is page 34, THE PRODUCTION AND FIXATION OF NEW BREEDS. By W. E. Castle, Assistant Professor of Zoology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.
This report is from a genetics conference in 1907. The whole document is chock full of awesome stuff! I will be back to this thread after I read some more things, and will probably have some discussion points.
Here's the intro to the essay:
The art of animal breeding has been practiced by man since the earliest dawn of civilization. In many cases its products attained centuries ago a degree of excellence which we can scarcely hope to surpass, as in the horses of Arabia and the poultry of China. Of course, these and other breeds have since been modified in useful directions and are capable of further useful modifications; but for the needs of the time and place where bred, the horses and the poultry of centuries ago were probably not inferior to our own. In creating new breeds of domesticated animals, we are merely adapting to new and special conditions very ancient and excellent breeds. This is a work of the highest importance, and I have no desire to minimize it. But while we contemplate with satisfaction present attainments and prospects, let us not forget our debt to the past for taking wild species into domestication and moulding them to meet man's needs. To those unchronicled pioneer breeders we owe entirely the material with which we work.
We stand at the beginning of a new era in which breeding will pass from the condition of an art into that of a science. The difference will be that we shall know the reasons for our procedure, whereas the breeder of the past did not. We shall continue to produce breeds just as he produced them, but we shall know how we produce them, a thing of which he was largely ignorant. His work was largely haphazard; ours will be orderly. He experimented until he got what was wanted or until he found his ideal unattainable; we shall produce what we want, and knowing what is attainable will not attempt the impossible. He progressed indirectly, awaiting the caprice of chance; we shall go straight to the goal, knowing the way beforehand.
We stand at the beginning of a new era in which breeding will pass from the condition of an art into that of a science. The difference will be that we shall know the reasons for our procedure, whereas the breeder of the past did not. We shall continue to produce breeds just as he produced them, but we shall know how we produce them, a thing of which he was largely ignorant. His work was largely haphazard; ours will be orderly. He experimented until he got what was wanted or until he found his ideal unattainable; we shall produce what we want, and knowing what is attainable will not attempt the impossible. He progressed indirectly, awaiting the caprice of chance; we shall go straight to the goal, knowing the way beforehand.
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