BREEDS AND BREEDING. A breed of domestic animals or cultivated plants is a group of individuals which exhibit in common a certain combination of hereditary characters. Breeds have had their origin in the unconscious or accidental selection by man of wild stocks that tolerated the vicinity of man and were useful or attractive to him. Following upon this domestica tion came the recognition by the pastoralist and husbandman that related individuals maintained under exactly similar conditions differed among themselves, that these variations commonly bred true, and that improvements in husbandry induced a fuller expres sion of usefulness or attractiveness. The breeder has never pos sessed the power of invoking the appearance of a new hereditary character, but by guiding the formation of different groupings of these hereditary characters as they presented themselves, he first made the unimproved local breeds of stock and later, as the standards of perfection became more precisely defined and the art of breeding developed, the modern breeds, which differ from local breeds in that inborn dissimilarity among the individuals corn prising them is much rarer and less pronounced.
Modern improved breeds are commonly classified as "fancy" and "utility." A fancy breed is one in which the characterization of the ideal type is not directly concerned with economic values, but is one that is attractive. Since the aim of the breeder is to produce individuals that shall win prizes in competitive exhibi tions, the standard of the ideal type can be rarely attained, much importance being attached to finer points and shades of charac terization. The "fancy" pigeon may or may not be able to fly, but it must have some character, e.g., colour, pattern, size, gen erally or of local parts, developed to a point that commonly is almost pathological. The "fancy" dog may or may not be useless as a dog, but it must exhibit some hereditary character, e.g., short legs, dished face, hairlessness, developed to its extreme. The utility breeds, on the other hand, are bred for and judged by the productivity and performance of the individuals comprising them. There are milk, beef and draught breeds of cattle, and in addi tion dual-purpose breeds (milk and beef, or beef and draught) and triple-purpose breeds (milk, beef and draught). There are wool and mutton breeds of sheep, each primarily bred for the production of wool or of mutton, the alternative being regarded more or less as a by-product. There are other breeds of sheep which are dual-purpose breeds. There are the fine-woolled and the long-woolled breeds, each carefully bred and maintained for the production of their own particular kind of fleece in addition to mutton. Of utility rabbits there are "pelt" breeds, bred for their skins, and the Angora bred for its wool. Of utility fowls there are the "egg," the "flesh" and the dual-purpose breeds. From an economic point of view, it would appear that to keep the "all-round" breed on a large scale is less profitable than to keep several single-purpose breeds on a smaller.
Darwin, in his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domesti cation (1868), placed on record a very complete statement of the facts concerning the origin and development of breeds and, more over, gave to these facts a very rational interpretation. See