APPENDIX. 549 



work, but the only American stud book in existence prior to Wallace's. 

 From these, and every other available source, Mr. Wallace began to glean 

 and systematically compile the pedigrees of thoroughbred and so-called 

 thoroughbred horses. Of these sources by far the most valuable was 

 Skinner's periodical, begun in Baltimore in 1829. Novice as he was at 

 the time, Edgar's work was regarded with more than suspicion by Mr. 

 Wallace, and, as a matter of caution as well as of honesty, whenever he 

 borrowed pedigrees from Edgar they were so credited. 



Modern methods of investigating pedigrees were not dreamed of by our 

 compiler then. His principal aim seems to have been to get as large a 

 collection as possible, and whatever was found in print, whether news- 

 paper, book, or hand-bill, was taken for granted; and pedigrees gathered 

 from private sources were, like the others, submitted to little scrutiny. 

 Neither men's motives nor their knowledge of what they represented to 

 know were questioned, and in this way, after years of labor, a great mass 

 of pedigrees was gathered, written in new form and order, and the thor- 

 oughbred stallions numbered which was the first instance of numbering 

 horses in registration. While compiling the thoroughbred pedigrees, Mr. 

 Wallace also incidentally seized upon such information as he found about 

 trotting pedigrees and records, and these he arranged as an appendix 

 to his work. Finally, in 1867, "Wallace's American Stud Book," a 

 great, handsome volume of 1,017 pages, bound pretentiously in green and 

 gold, was published in New York. 



The trotting supplement embraced about 100 pages, and that the editor 

 was pretty well satisfied with it is shown by a sentence in the preface: 

 "It is believed that this compilation of trotting horses, embracing over 

 700 animals, is very nearly perfect, but it is not claimed to be entirely so." 

 Of course, from the method of its compilation it was decidedly imper- 

 fect, but it was the best and only compilation of trotting pedigrees up to 

 that time. 



Meanwhile Mr. Wallace was pushing forward the compilation of the sec- 

 ond volume of the " Stud Book," and in this traveled much, making per- 

 sonal investigations. In 1870 this was completed, all the ground up to 

 that year having been gone over, but in the course of the work " a great 

 light" began to dawn upon the compiler. He found that he had been 

 proceeding on a wrong plan entirely. Experience in compiling and inves- 

 tigating taught him that a pedigree may be printed in a newspaper, or 

 even in a book, and still not be true. He discovered that the sources from 

 which he had drawn were largely unreliable, that hundreds of pedigrees, 

 through ignorance or dishonesty, or both, were fabrications and frauds, 

 especially in their extensions in the maternal lines, and with the realiza- 

 tion in full force of this knowledge came the determination, even though 

 the last page of the manuscript for the second volume of the "Stud 

 Book " was complete, that it should never see the light. 



At the same time Mr. Wallace had discovered that the trotting sup- 



