52 THE HORSE 



books the males and females are designated by both 

 names and numbers, while no number is given to the 

 female shorthorns: 



No. 77, Blossom. 



No. 84, Blutcher. 



No. 87, Booth. 



So closely have the pedigrees of more recent 

 recorded animals been supervised that it is possible to 

 trace for from six to ten, and even to more generations, 

 the ancestry of animals bred as far back as 1870 with 

 scarcely a single break. One of many illustrations 

 which might be cited is the pedigree, so far as the 

 page will allow, of the Eighth Duchess of Geneva 

 (Fig. 5), sold at public auction September 10, 1873, 

 at New York Mills for $40,600. It would require a 

 strip of paper some ten feet wide and three hundred 

 feet long to give her entire pedigree and to record all 

 of the names of her well -authenticated ancestors in 

 ordinary writing in the form given below, in which 

 but six generations are set down. As the number of 

 ancestors in each generation increases in a geometrical 

 ratio, the seventh generation would contain one hun- 

 dred and twenty -eight ancestors, the tenth generation 

 one thousand and twenty -four, and the fifteenth genera- 

 tion thirty- two thousand seven hundred and sixty- 

 eight ancestors. There are many animals now living 

 which have still more extended pedigrees then the Eighth 

 Duchess of Geneva. Some animals are recorded in both 

 the English and the American herd -books. The num- 

 bers in parentheses refer to the English, the others to 

 the American records. 



