ANIMAL BREEDING 671 



Now our pedigree records furnish little information outside of 

 blood lines, and they are totally silent as to what the individuals 

 actually were in their own personalities. This information the 

 breeder needs and must have if he is to succeed. Some slight 

 beginning has been made in the way of track records among 

 racing horses, and in advanced registry among dairy cows. 

 Then, too, breeders aim to supply in their private catalogues 

 some detailed information about particular animals ; but in many 

 cases such description contains so large an element of adver- 

 tising as to throw doubt upon its accuracy. 



As the case stands to-day, there is no way in which an impar- 

 tial and trustworthy record can be assured even of our most 

 famous and valuable animals. This being the case, the individual 

 breeder coming into the business must devote years of his life 

 to the accumulation of a mass of data more or less reliable, 

 gathered irregularly and often surreptitiously from the under- 

 current of side talk in which old and prominent breeders, like 

 other mortals, sometimes indulge. 



Now this ought not to be. Such information belongs to the 

 breed and to future breeders, who have a right to know the facts 

 about the animals whose blood lines they are obliged to use ; and 

 sometime, in some way, when commercial interests are no longer 

 supreme, if not before, an accurate and impartial descrip- 

 tion of every great animal will be made a matter of permanent 

 record and will find its way into the history of the breed. 



It is to the interest of the breed that this should be so, and it 

 is also to the interest of the young breeder, that he may proceed 

 at once and intelligently with his breeding operations and not 

 spend twenty of the best years of his life in collecting informa- 

 tion by indirect and often devious methods, information that 

 is by good rights public property, and as such is the rightful 

 heritage of every man from the moment he becomes a breeder 

 of that particular breed. 



A brilliant future awaits the breed that will secure and put 

 into its history an accurate and critical description, at least of 

 every famous animal, said description covering all distinguishing 

 or unusual traits both desirable and undesirable, and not confined 

 to extravagant praise. 



