Breeding and Improvement of Farm Animals

Abstract

IT is becoming more and more realised that it is a matter of primary importance to the stock-breeding industry to possess an understanding of the processes of reproduction and development. Of our existing knowledge of this subject in its relation to the breeding of farm animals, some was acquired long since by direct practical experience and has been handed down for countless generations. It follows that such knowledge, although generally sound—for otherwise it could scarcely have stood the test of time—was necessarily limited and uncorrelatcd, for it existed without reference to scientific system and is not founded on scientific principles. In recent years, however, a great deal of attention has been paid to the science of breeding, and although it cannot be said that research methods have led as yet to any spectacular developments of economic importance, nevertheless a great number of observations have been made and deductions arrived at which in the aggregate arc already having an important effect upon practice. Breeding and Improvement of Farm Animals. By Prof. Victor Arthur Rice. (McGraw-Hill Publications in the Agricultural and Botanical Sciences.) Pp. xiv + 362. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.; London: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., Ltd., 1926.) 17s. 6d. net.