The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1886-02-05
noMEarIoArloM.


Mems Minds, Moving In Unity, the Cause Of
Animal Improvements.
The triumph of mans skill in pro.
ducing improved breeds, it has been
said, is that of evolving uniformity
from variety. Each breed contributing
to the composition of an improved
breeds adds to the variety, and it is the
breeders part to extract and fix the
good properties, purge out the bad Of
each tributary breed, and bring the
whole of the good together in uniform
fitness. Nature, indeed, evolves varie-
ties, as conditions vary, so that animal
forms, habits, and capabilities adapt
themselves to altered conditions, but
in her operations, while change is in
progress, uniformity prevails. Even
while whole race is undergoing mOdi-
ication from natural influences, the
advance is generally uniform, always
orderly; more here or more there, pos
sibly, according to the pressure of cir
cumstances, but not fitful, sudden, nor
in its results miscellaneous. A natur-
ally produced variety is not 4 motley
group.
In animals under domestication, and
analOgOusly in cultivated plants, the
tendency to variation is greater in pro-
portion to the greater variety and pow
er of the influences brought to bear
upon the parents, during their own de-
velOpment, and during the period of
reproduction. Divergence of charac-
ter may begin as in a state of nature;
but in a state of nature the came di-
veroence from the parent or
original type has occurred, in
all probability, in any two animals
which happen to pair; while under do
mestication the widest diversities are
sometimes designedly brought together
with the object of obtaining quite new
effects, or, undesignedly, by the migra-
tiOns of man; and animals are carried
about the world by man as he travels
onward, and as he establishes inter-
national trade, much more rapidly than
they would under natural conditions,
ever move about, and even into lands
which, if left to nature, they would
never reach. All these changes take
effect upon the character of the animals,
producing sub-variCties, more marked
variation in the course of generations,
and eventually distinct new breeds.
The excellence of these new breeds de-
ponds upon mans skill and patience.
In districts where a certain defined
want has created a design to supply it
either the deliberate design of a far
seeing pioneer breeder, or the unprO-
nOunoed and almost unconscious design
of a whole community of breeders, who
know what they want and are
working up to it instinctively
new breeds of marvellous per-
lection have been developed within
few generations. Wherever mans
wants press him, invention is stimula-
ted. In sOrle cases the results are in
tools Of labor or Of manufacture, in APP
planes and provision for the preserva-
ton of life and health, for comfort and
for pleasure; in ships to cross the
oceans, in machinery to move them; in
weapons for defense or for the chase;
in other cases we have the same invent
i've or designing capability producing
notifications and improvements in the
animal world to increase mans food
supply and his clothing, or to give him
a powerful fellOw-labOrer, perfectly
subject to his control, yetwith strength,
speed and endurance vastly beyond his
own. The suggestion here thrown out,
that an improved breed is not always
the work of a single designer, is one
which we think deserves the attention
of those who study the origin of breeds,
and who are ever anxious to couple
with the birth of a breed some prom
inent name. Oftener, we feel con-
WINGED. the truth is not so, but that
mems minds moving in the mass, in
unity, cause the greatest results of ami
NAL domesticatiOn and improvement,
as also the greatest advances in the
sciences and the arts.-NatiOndJ LiUe
Stock Journal.