ESTABLISHING A PEDIGREE 51 



nothing is said of ancestors, because nothing is known 

 of them. In the case of trotting -horses the pedigree 

 may end abruptly on the darn's side by the statement 

 "out of a good road mare." Fortunately, the launching 

 of a new breed and the admission of animals to 

 registry are placed in the hands of an expert and 

 reliable committee or commission. The rules governing 

 the registration of animals of different breeds in the 

 first volume, and sometimes in a few subsequent volumes, 

 are quite variable, and half-bloods, three-fourths bloods 

 and even animals of unknown origin are sometimes 

 registered in the first instance. As the years go by, the 

 rules for admission to' registration are made more strict, 

 and finally no animal is eligible for record whose sire 

 and dam are not recorded. Most recorded animals have 

 three, four, or more generations of recorded ancestors 

 on both the dam and the sire side. The Shorthorn Herd- 

 book serves well to illustrate the subject of pedigrees, 

 and has been selected for illustration because the first 

 volume was compiled with great care and subsequent 

 issues have been supervised most critically. The first 

 volume was issued when pedigrees were little prized 

 by livestock farmers, yet the utmost care was taken 

 to verify the quality and breeding of animals admitted 

 to record, as well as the reliability of the breeders. 



The following records are taken from the first 

 volume of Coate's English Shorthorn Herd-book. It 

 will be seen that apparently no information whatever 

 as to breeding was obtainable; nevertheless, we are not 

 to suppose that these animals were not above the 

 average of the cattle in their locality. In most herd 



