888 APPENDIX. 



Christendom could scarcely find a drop of Desdemona left. 

 Still the cow is bought and sold under herd book approval 

 as "just a plain Desdemona one of the old-fashioned 

 sort," notwithstanding the fact that she is to all intents 

 and purposes of the best Aberdeenshire blood! In plain 

 terms if Desdemona is reached in the fourteenth remove 

 she will simply be one among 16,384 other recorded ani- 

 mals appearing in this cow's pedigree, any one of which 

 has just as good a right to give its name to Gem of Oak- 

 land 4th! She is no more a descendant of Desdemona than 

 of thousands of other cows. Now for the important fact; 

 the Desdemonas were not in the Short-horn "smart set" 

 in the old days of speculation in pedigree. Under the 

 present system they must, nevertheless, continue to bear 

 that name and be rated accordingly, despite the fact that 

 there is none of the blood of poor old Desdemona left. The 

 time has come when this absurd "tracing" reference as 

 printed in the herd book should cease. Even if it had 

 some real significance in the old days it has absolutely 

 none at the present time. This of course opens up a dis- 

 cussion of the whole scheme of family nomenclature in 

 Short-horn cattle. From the earliest periods breeders of 

 Short-horns have classified their cattle into families by ref- 

 erence to the maternal side of the tree only. I can see why 

 in the recording of the earliest foundation stock this might 

 have had some justification in the judgment of the fathers 

 of the breed. When all was chaos as regards pedigree, such 

 men as Colling, Bates and the elder Booth were in the 

 habit of buying select cows wherever they could find them. 

 Colling ran across Lady Maynard at Eryholme. Bates hit 

 upon the Duchess heifer at Darlington market and Thos. 

 Booth Sr. found the first Halnaby at the same local fair. 

 Each thought that he had a prize and Bates openly boasted 

 after he had acquired his original Duchess that from her 

 he would produce Short-horns such as the world had 

 never seen before. And he came near "making good"; 

 although as shown on page 101 of "Short-horn Cattle," 

 the greatest of the so-called Duchess bulls, the Duke of 

 Northumberland, carried far more of Stephenson's Prin- 



