ON BREEDIXO. 197 



prices, and after the, lull was dead, men wondered what they 

 were about, not to appreciate the value of his blood I The sole 

 value of the bull was in his blood and pedigree. Of himself, he 

 was nothing; in his blood and pedigree, he was everything. So, 

 on the contrary, we have seen a bull, almost perfect to the eye, 

 pure in blood, and of good pedigree; but his pedigree traced 

 through ancestors whose qualities were incongruous both coarse 

 and fine, or otherwise defective. His stock were uncertain in 

 their good qualities, and many of them decidedly inferior. The 

 first named bull could trace his lineage through a long line of 

 ancestry, possessing uniformly good qualities; the latter one 

 could not. He was patch-work, although thorough bred, as his 

 pedigree showed ; but there was no fixed standard of excellence 

 through his long line of ancestry, and through him, their bad 

 qualities all scattered into his stock, and his own good ones, as 

 seen in his stock, amounted to nothing positively certain. Thus, 

 pedigree is indispensable; and apparent excellence in the animal 

 himself, unsupported by pedigree of undoubted excellence in a 

 long line, is of minor value. 



Still, in the selection of breeding animals, good form and 

 appearance, and good pedigree should go together. As a rule, 

 we would not rely on pedigree alone. The appearance of the 

 animal should endorse the pedigree, and when good points and 

 good pedigree are combined, they constitute excellence of the 

 highest order. A sire or dam may be faulty in some minor par- 

 ticular of feature, yet when that minor feature is surmounted 

 by a prominent excellence in a more important and controlling 

 one, the inferior point may be overlooked in securing the better 

 one. Even apparent coarseness in some particulars, belonging 

 to a sire or dam, may be excused, when connected with good 

 constitution and stamina, if either be coupled with one of the 

 opposite sex, having a tendency to over-fineness, or exceeding 

 delicacy. The vigor and apparent coarseness of the one will be 



