Ebook The Inheritance of Fecundity in Fowls

I do not pen these lines as an introduction to the science of breeding, but as an introduction to the work of the author of this book.

It was, I think, about 1912 that the name of Oscar Smart first became recognised as an authority on Breeding, but his work had been in preparation since his boyhood. He was a life-long invalid, rarely out of his own garden, and this fact, together with his love of Biology, provided him with opportunities to study and experiment in the problems of heredity. He began his work as a schoolboy, not merely with the boyish love of animal life, but as a student of cause and effect. Successively he bred and experimented with Canaries, Pigeons, and Poultry. He studied the great masters, such as Darwin and Mendel; he applied their teachings to his own stock; sometimes his work corroborated theirs, sometimes it did not. He formed new theories which in practice often proved wrong but more often right. Chiefly his work lay in the study and application of Mendelism, but in some important details he had cause to reject that great Biologist's theories. About 1910 he felt fitted to offer his work to the public, and, as is so often the case with really great men, it was rejected. In latter years, when his work had won public recognition, he was fond of telling how he first won literary fame. Two articles were submitted to the Editor of a well-known poultry paper. The one dealt with the washing of exhibition fowls, the other dealt with the inheritance of fecundity, and represented fifteen years of solid study and experimental work. The former was accepted and paid for, the latter declined.