2JO HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



CHAPTER XII. 



PURE SHORT-HORNS HERD BOOKS PEDIGREES. 



THE subjects embraced in this chapter are, of necessity, more or 

 less debateable; still we shall strive to treat them with truth, and 

 fairness. 



The question may very properly first be asked : What is a "thor- 

 ough-bred or pure-blooded " Short-horn ? 



The simplest and most obvious answer may be : An animal which 

 traces its descent through a line of ancestors, on both sides of its 

 parentage, back to the earliest ages in Short-horn history or the 

 fountain-head of its race, whether such ancestry be recorded in the 

 Herd Books or not. To ascertain such fact to an absolute certainty, 

 a close and thorough investigation of every volume (possibly) of the 

 books, both English and American, now thirty in number, and con- 

 taining over seventy thousand pedigrees, unless other positive testi- 

 mony is at hand, must be made in order to settle the fact of 

 indisputable purity of blood, and .even then it cannot unquestionably 

 be done, as our previous history has already shown. 



The question of purity in descent is a broad and intricate one. 

 Numerous commentators and critics through the papers, pamphlets, 

 magazines and journals, of both past and present days, have from 

 time to time ventilated their opinions upon it, and arrived at widely 

 different conclusions, each one for himself, and apparently satisfied in 

 his own correctness ; yet they have proved nothing beyond what the 

 Herd Books and they but imperfectly either investigated or under- 

 stood together with some traditions derived from the old breeders 

 have given them. It is unfortunate that the investigations of this 

 subject have, from the beginning, both in England and America, 

 been too much of a partisan and in many of them of a personal 

 character, as well as exhibiting a prejudice against, or partiality for 

 some of the bloods and pedigrees which they discussed. 



Our history in the foregoing pages has related as definitely as could 

 be ascertained, the origin of the Short-horn race; and the Herd 

 Books have recorded their individual progress down to the present 



