INTRODUCTORY. 



tte most valuable and purest animals in the world, thereby 

 giving us a market for a large portion of the cattle-breeding 

 countries of the world; we must not rest upon our laurels, 

 and imagine that, because our leading breeders have done such 

 great things in the past, therefore we can afford to leave things 

 as they are. The watchword should be progress. We must 

 take care that nothing is wanted on our part — the great meat 

 and milk producing community — to make the most of our 

 opportunities, and take care to maintain, and, if possible, 

 increase, the leading position that has been won for us by the 

 energy, enterprise, and skill of our leading breeders. In con- 

 sidering to whom merit is chiefly due for the work that has 

 been done, it would be base ingratitude to overlook the great 

 encouragement that has been afforded by those landlords who, 

 truly realising the duties as well as the privileges of their 

 position, have devoted time and money to cultivate the best 

 animals of their particular kinds. The influence of such centres 

 has been most marked upon the cattle of surrounding districts. 

 Eecent troubles have (for a time only, we trust) checked such 

 enterprise ; but the good seed has been sown, and a more correct 

 appreciation generally exists as to the importance of using good 

 sires — not only animals of undeniable lineage, by which alone we 

 can hope for the transmission of hereditary qualities, but 

 animals that exhibit in themselves all the best characteristics of 

 their respective lines of blood. There was a time, during what 

 may now be styled the breeding mania, when, both here and in 

 America, pedigree, almost regardless of personal qualities, 

 carried the day, and what is known as line-breeding was 

 regarded as of vital importance. If only there was no bar 

 sinister in the scutcheon, personal defects were overlooked. 

 The closer an animal's ancestry had been allied, the greater its 

 value, although constitution and real utility had been seriously 

 injured in the process. Experience has now happily dissipated 

 erroneous notions, and, whilst the value of blood is justly appre- 

 ciated, it is felt that the best test of that value is the possession 

 of personal excellence, and the necessity for an occasional out- 

 cross of new, though it may be distantly-allied, blood, by which 

 (if judiciously used) vigour and good points are maintained and 

 increased, is fully recognised. We remember the time when a 



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