The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1885-05-09
SOIL AND CLIMATE.

Iney are Important FACTORS III amman
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 a crop from them. Mere
growing was about all they could do in
his garden, and he is n successful horti-
culturist. 4AYet 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 a different soil, the same
variety of pea had proved an enormous
cropper, of delicious flavor. We all
know how a 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 a
bracing air, some genial warmth; these
a damp, those dry atmosphere, a
sheltered or an airy situation. A seeds
man, nevertheless, will sometimes as
sert Internationally that a specified
seed is the best; and in similarly I'M
qualified and unguarded terms, a 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,
the test of practice in each locality
must finally decide the question of the
predominance 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
! l.
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 al
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 bearing
upon the habits, tempers, forms and al
other characteristics of animals, thai
the breeds become specially adapted tC
|
and constituents of the food which sup
ports it are constantly the same, Of
closely similar. If the changes o.
pasturage to which a breed has beer
subjected, possibly during hundreds o
generations, are but slight Gas in thu
case of local breeds of mountain sheep,
the probability, we may say certainty
. is, that adaptation of the breed to total
" new circumstances can be effected
only by sacrifice, to some extent, of it
distinguishing characteristics; and
| the breed have not Gas some breed
, have, while others do not possess) tn
t property of elasticity, or facile adapta
: ton TO new circumstances, that breed
l so useful in its old home and so justl
l commended by its supporters there
will inevitably, like our friends peas
? lose reputation by trial elsewhere
| Lire Stock Journal.