The Guild of Farm Scientists were a group of experimental animal researchers who began their work at the peak of the industrial era in Britain, but then moved to mainland Europe, and later to a secluded privately owned group of islands in the South Pacific - becoming more secretive and some would say, more obsessive, as they did so.
It is possible they had discovered the secret to DNA long before it was even researched elsewhere, but all members were sworn to silence and all discoveries jealously guarded until they could be marketed by more ethically minded interests.
But their secrecy was to prove their downfall.
It was not until nuclear bomb testing was carried out in the South Pacific that the remains of their research laboratories were, quite literally, brought to light. Visitors to the area first believed they were witnessing the results of fall-out poisoning but in retrospect the likelihood was that at least some of the creatures reported on, around, and sometimes scattered all over the islands, were the culmination of what was by then some 130 years of continual experimental selective breeding programmes.
This issue commemorates the creation of the Chevache. Named by a Frenchman, it was a mixture of cow and horse, intended to provide the best of beef and milk production, but, in the days before mechanised transport, capable of being transporting itself great distances in a shorter time.  The next stage in development was hoped to have been a homing version. The Chevache - had it been taken up as viable farm livestock worldwide - would now have been perfect for today's fast food industry, being a single ingredients source for both beefburger and milk shake.  Apart from the bits of horse of course.