APPENDIX. 875 



of the past that will prove the prelude to present and 

 future success. 



I do not see how any man can become an owner of 

 Short-horn cattle without wishing to familiarize himself 

 with the history of the breed. I do not see how any man 

 can undertake the breeding of Short-horns without in- 

 forming himself thoroughly as to the ancestry of the cattle 

 with which he proposes to work. I do not believe any 

 man ever acquired genuine enthusiasm in this field until 

 he had first mastered the main facts relating to the careers 

 of the great breeders and herdsmen of the past. I do not 

 believe that the average breeder begins to appreciate how 

 much it would add to his pleasure and profit to be able 

 to trace step by step the progress of the Short-horn in 

 Great Britain and America in order that he may define 

 clearly the true relations of his own cattle to the breed 

 at large. 



* * * 



For upwards of twenty years I have been searching the 

 highways and by-ways of this most extraordinary history 

 with an ever-increasing interest and with a steadily widen- 

 ing appreciation of the fact that there is good to be found 

 upon every page of the English and American herd books. 

 I defy any fair-minded man to follow faithfully the record 

 of the breed for the past century and at the end pro- 

 nounce himself a partisan of any one tribe, any one group 

 of tribes or of any one section. I contend that the con- 

 scientious study of Short-horn history will do this for 

 any honest owner of cattle of this breed it will make a 

 Short-horn man in the highest and best sense of the word 

 even of those who have become enslav?d by fads and 

 fashions. It will lift him out of the narrow slough of this, 

 that, or the other whirn into which he may have fallen, into 

 the bright sunlight of reason and common sense. There 

 is nothing like scaling a height if we would make a ra- 

 tional study of the plain below. There is nothing like 

 knowledge to dispel the clouds of ignorance. There is 

 nothing like strolling beyond the narrow confines of our 

 own little horizon to discover what lies in the great world 



