Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 303]

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295 Mr. Detmers—Since when has breeding made progress ? Not before anatomy, physiology, and those sciences were cultivated as sciences. It is but a few hundred years—and I say very much when I say t w o hundred years—that which we may call breeding, has really made progress ; that better breeds have been developed. I will not claim that those celebrated breeders in England, for instance, have been graduates of colleges. No, they have n o t ; but they have been true observers of nature; they have listened to the workings of nature, and found out the rule by which nature governs, and they have applied those rules ; they studied physiology from nature. It makes but little difference in the end, whether we study directly from nature, by our own observation, or whether it is taught us in colleges or schools. "We have breeders in our own land—breeders who excel—who are not graduates of colleges, but are true observers of nature; others who have money enough, and who commence stock-breeding and think all that is necessary is experimenting ; and as experimenters only will they succeed; but those men wTho follow certain rules—rules which have been gathered from observation of nature—are the only ones that can, and that will succeed. Professor Daniels—A science is only classified knowledge; and when we speak of science, or speak of applying these rules of science, we are simply applying those rules by which a certain kind of knowledge—by which accumulated knowledge, or that kind of knowledge by which we accumulate enough, or a sufficient number of facts to state that a certain theory is true—and we call that a law—that is, scientific law. Now it is immaterial whether science comes first, or practice comes first. That is true, and I know it is true of Dr. Miles. He does not teach his zoology, he does not teach his stock-breeding, until he teaches physiology; when he teaches stock-breeding, and applies the laws of physiology to it. I know that he does not teach practical agriculture—that is the higher and better course—until the student has had botany and chemistry, and he applies those principles right along—he claims that they are practical agriculture, as he teaches them; but he applies those principles right along that the student has been learning for two years before. It is practical agriculture when he teaches i t ; that is when he shows them how those peculiar laws they have learned apply. If the students know it, it is science; a,nd he nor any other man, who has had any experience in this matter, would attempt to teach agriculture arbitrarily; but he would teach those facts as far as he knew them, and show how far science explains them, and that is science, just so far it goes. Everything cannot be