The Camera Records: In order to accomplish this, the breeder must keep accurate records of births and weights at various ages. With these records he can then sort out his best cattle, save them for breeding stock, and send the rest to market. The keeping of these records of performance is not presently a general practice among beef cattle breeders, but the more progressive breeders either keep their own records or belong to an organization which does it for them.
When records of length sufficient to produce statistically significant data are not available, use has been made of partial rainfall records, crop records, thickness of tree rings, and similar indirect methods to estimate water flow magnitudes. Records from adjacent drainage areas are sometimes used as a basis for water flow estimates, but due to geographical and meteorological phenomena, the comparison is seldom valid without large and frequently not well-known correction factors.
The Camera records what is focused upon the ground glass. If we had been there, we would have seen it so. We could have touched it, counted the pebbles, noted the wrinkles, no more, no less. However, we have been shown again and again that this is pure illusion. Subjects can be misrepresented, distorted, faked. We now know it, and even delight in it occasionally, but the knowledge still cannot shake our implicit faith in the truth of a photographic record. |
