Family Merit and Individual Merit as Bases for Selection. Part I

Abstract

“‘Family’’ is a word often used in plant and animal breeding, although with variable meaning. Always it conveys the idea that members of the same family are more like each other than they are like members of other families. Yet rarely does this go so far as to imply that members of the same family are exactly alike, or that two families do not overlap at all. The primary basis of family is always relationship by descent, with any outward or phenotypic similarity being a result of that. When some useful end or practical convenience is served by classifying individuals primarily according to their own phenotypes, the resulting groups are called by some such term as ‘‘types’’ or ‘‘classes’’ or ‘‘kinds’’ and are not called families.