The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-05-08
solL AND CLIMATE.


They Arc Important Factors In Aninal
Development.
Once more we draw from vegetable
life an illustration of the circumstances
affecting animal development. An am
ateur gardener friend, writing of some
peas sent to him as seed. with strong
recommendation Of the variety to which
they belonged, declared that if all that
had been said of them were true they
must be peas of Paradise, but he could
scarcely get crop from them. Mere
growing was about all they could do in
his garden, and he is q successful horti-
culturist. Yet the character had not
been overdrawn. Under slightly differ
ent circumstances of climate. not one
hundred miles from his place of resi-
dence, and in different soil, the same
variety ofpea had proved an enormous
cropper, of delicious flavor. We all
know how certain cereal, or root. or
forage crop, or grass. takes peculiar de-
light in certain districts; will flourish
on one side of hill and sicken on the
other side; how many crops want
bracing air, some genial warmth; these
damp, those a dry atmosphere, a
sheltered or an airy situation. A seeds
man, nevertheless, will sometimes as
sert Internationally that specified
seed i, the best; and in similarly I'M
qualified and unguarded terms, stock
breeder has been known to claim pre-
eminence of merit for the breed which
he has found best for his own purpose
and in his own hands.
Competitive trials Of various breeds
have been suggested, for the object of
settling disputed claims of superiority.
Such trials may be made very useful in
their way: they may add valuable sta
tistics to the stores of information al
ready within the reach of breeders who
wish to know what is going on out
side the boundary lines of their own
land; and no breeder who neglects
those stores can claim to be keeping
abreast of the worlds progress, what
ever he may be doing independently in
his isolated position; but when all that
experiment can demonstrate is known,
must finally decide the question OF the
performance of breed. A breed may
again and again prove second best, or
third best. in competitive trials, yet
again and again exclude its superiOrs
from the places to which it specially
adapts itself. The mountain breeds of
sheep have each their own ranges of
pasturage. upon which no other breeds
can thrive. If these breeds were eX-
terminated, years, probably to be
counted by centuries, must pass
before breeds equally well suited
to those particular ranges could take
their place, and when breeds so suited
to the altitude, climate, soil and pasture
of those mountain ranges were at
length produced possibly their char
acter might be found to assimilate very
closely with that of the extinct breeds
which they had succeeded. The con-
ditiOns of life and the constituents of
food, in short, have so strong i bearing
upon the habits, tempers, forms and all
other characteristics of animals. that
the breeds become specially adapted to
places where those conditions of life
and constituents of the food which sup
ports it are constantly the same, or
closely similar. If the changes of
paSturage to which a breed has been
subjected, possibly during hundreds of
generations, are but slight Gas in the
case of local breeds of mountain sheep)
the probability. we may say certainty,
is, that adaptation of the breed to total
ly new circumstances can be effected
only by sacrifice, to some extent, of its
distinguishing characteristics; and if
the breed have not Gas some breeds
have, while others do not possess) the
property of elasticity, or facile adapta-
ton TO new circumstances, that breed,
SO useful in its old home and so justly
commended by its supporters there,
will inevitably, like our friends peas,
lose reputation by trial elsewhere.--
Lire Stock journal.