APPENDIX. 



cess blood than of the Duchess. The claim being set up 

 that such cows as Lady Maynard and the original Duchess 

 were much better than any other cows in the district in 

 which the improving of the Teeswater cattle was in prog- 

 ress, it naturally followed that those who had immediate 

 descendants of those few outstanding cows should use the 

 name of the female for which such superlative merit was 

 claimed in designating the progeny even unto the second 

 and third generations, regardless of what part the bulls 

 used might have had in the production of the younger 

 cattle. It gave money value to the grandsons and grand- 

 daughters, the great-grandsons and great-granddaugh- 

 ters to say that they were descended direct from 

 such and such a famous cow. Hence the printing of the 

 pedigrees in such way as to bring out that fact to the 

 virtual exclusion of all others. This system once adopted 

 has been continued by Short-horn breeders to the present 

 day. 



Historians tell us that in the lowest unorganized forms 

 of society, when savagery and barbarism held sway, it was 

 the universal rule that hereditary rights and property 

 descended through the mother. The reason for this is 

 apparent. There was no such thing as fixed habitations 

 or famliy relations. There might be doubt as to the pa- 

 ternity of a child born under such a system, but there 

 could be none as to the maternal side of the case. Names 

 and titles passed, therefore, from mother to offspring in- 

 stead of from the father, as in civilized society It thus 

 appears that in tracing descent through the dam and in 

 naming families from a foundation dam, Short-horn breed- 

 ers have simply perpetuated a relic of barbarism which 

 long since should have given way to a more rational sys- 

 tem. There is no question as to the paternity of Short- 

 horn calves. Under our system of breeding and registra- 

 tion the sire is absolutely known. Why then must we 

 revert to the methods of the aborigines of the wilderness 

 in undertaking to show the derivation of the progeny? 



My proposition is that the Short-horn assoc'ation should 

 drop the words "tracing to*" imp. so and so in recording 



