SECRETARY'S REPORT, 13 



If it were necessary for me to urge upon the Board the value of 

 pure blood in our breeding stock, I might cite many remarkable 

 instances to demonstrate it, as I have had no little expeiience in 

 the breeding of animals, particularly of neat stock, and I have had 

 it forced upon my observation repeatedly, that the longer animals 

 are bred in one line, and the purer their blood, the stronger and 

 more surely do they mark their ofiFspring ; and I cannot refrain 

 here citing as an example, the short-horn bull Leopard 2d, which 

 originated in the celebrated Bates stock, because he was so widely 

 known and had so much to do with establishing the character of 

 neat stock in the Kennebec valley. He. was a most notable in- 

 stance of the value of fixed properties in a sire, the evidence of 

 which I first obtained, when I bought him of E. P. Prentice, of Al- 

 bany, N. Y., in a written pedigree tracing his descent entirely 

 through pure-bred animals, and which was afterwards proved to 

 the satisfaction of all who sought his service with their cows, by 

 the unerring certainty with which he marked his get. 



According to the dictionaries, a pedigree is an account or regis- 

 ter of a line of ancestors ; but to a breeder of live stock it has a 

 wider significance. It here signifies that the animal possessing it 

 has a record of a line of ancestors, who have been religiously kept in 

 one race or breed, tracing their descent from unquestionable stock 

 of the same character. By it, as Mr. G-oodale says, in the intro- 

 duction to his valuable book on the breeding of domestic animals, 

 " satisfactory evidence is offered that the animal is of a pure and 

 distinct breed, that it possesses certain well-known hereditary 

 qualities." Finally it means to the live stock breeder a paper by 

 the examination of which the absolute purity of breeding in the 

 named animal may be*made positively clear and undisputable. 



It is the great safeguard which the purchaser may have against 

 fraud. He has not to rely solely upon the word of the breeder ; 

 and if one' should be so dishonorable as to attempt to deceive and 

 cheat by palming off a fictitious pedigree with his animals, he must 

 so "lie with circumstances of times, places and persons," that, by 

 reference to the very authorities quoted, he may be readily de- 

 tected. 



To be complete, a pedigree must exhibit the breed and name of 

 the animal, the date of its birth, the breeder's name and that of the 

 present owner, the names of the sire and dam and their progenitor 

 on both sides, back to herd-book numbers or to herds or flocks of 



