180 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



" What is a 'pedigree ? " is the first natural inquiry of the 

 uninitiated. We can only say that it is an account or register 

 of a line of ancestors, human or otherwise. Its value among 

 stock breeders consists in the evidence which it brings that the 

 animal is descended from a line, all the individuals of which 

 were ahke and excellent of their kind, and so almost sure to 

 transmit like excellences to their progeny. Pedigree is es- 

 pecially valuable " in proportion as it sliows an animal to be 

 descended not only from such as are purely of its own race or 

 breed, hut also from such individuals in that breed as were 

 specially noted for the excellences for which that particular 

 breed is esteemed^ Every animal, of course, has a hereditary 

 history, but it is only certain races or breeds which liave been 

 kept distinct for numbers of years whose pedigree is valuable, 

 the others having so intermixed that it would be impossible to 

 furnish a record of their ancestry. Pedigrees of horses, and 

 bulls, and cows, as well as of the human race, were kept in 

 families long previous to any regular herd book, the first Eng- 

 lish herd book of Shorthorn stock being publislied in 1822, and 

 the first American in 1846, and now we have also regular pub- 

 lished records of tlie Devons, Jerseys and Ayrshires, to which 

 will soon be added that of the Dutch. Any pedigree com- 

 mittee must be guided and controlled by the herd books as to 

 those breeds whose history they purport to record, and as to 

 others by such written or oral evidence as can be furnished by 

 the owners, and it is, therefore, of primary importance that 

 every owner of a purebred animal should have the birth and 

 lineage recorded in the proper herd book. This adds to the 

 " money value" of all thoroughbred stock, as the first inquiry 

 of a purchaser of it or its progeny is as to its record, just as a 

 purchaser of real estate expects to find its title in the books of 

 the register, and if the documents are not recorded, a just sus- 

 picion attaches to the purity of the lineage or title. Every one 

 is aware of the fact that all animals derive from their parents 

 certain permanent and inalienable characteristics — that as a 

 general proposition species is constant ; and though certain great 

 naturalists have disputed the absolute fixity of species, contend- 

 ing that new species may arise by accidental variation and 

 " natural selection," we have no direct evidence of this tak- 

 ing place, but on the contrary the experience of the past is 



