Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

4S8 HENRY BAIRD FAVILL
information from every source and willing to take up or
abandon any theory as its soundness is proved or disproved
b}^ scientific progress.
In the field of animal culture, which must always be
a domain of agriculture, there is probably less actual advance
due purely to scientific discovery than in any other
field.
Nevertheless, suggestions as to methods and principles
in animal culture, which follow developments of physiology
on the one hand and heredity on the other,
are in
the highest degree inspiring and offer great hope of signal
advance in the future.
It is worth taking note of, that the great discoveries
in heredity have been made in connection with plant culture,
and that the discoveries of physiology and in part of
heredity have been made in connection with the lowest and
simplest forms of animal life. From this we must derive
the lesson that inference and conclusion as to the fundamental
principles of heredity and development are not
safely to be founded upon observations, no matter how
intelligent, made upon highly organized animals.
What we know practically about breeding, however,
and the methods which we pursue, is as yet of necessity
founded upon the experience of intelligent and industrious
breeders, and up to this tirne these demonstrations must
be our guide.
There come in, however, from time to time, ideas
founded upon studies in heredity upon the simplest forms
of life which may be set down as fixed principles, and it
is of the utmost importance to the breeding enterprise
that as rapidly as these principles become established,
breeders should fit them in to their scheme of ideas no
matter what apparent practical view may have to be discarded
in so doing.
The principles of heredity and growth necessarily can
be established only in connection with organisms so simple
that the terms of the problem can be clearly seen.
When