ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH HERD BOOK. 231 



time, through the pedigrees which they contain ; but it may be well 

 to understand the authority on which those pedigrees were based, 

 and for that a history of the foundation of the English Herd Book 

 should be related. 



We have seen that the Short-horns had been more or less cultivated 

 and no doubt greatly improved through some past centuries in the coun- 

 ties comprising the ancient Northumbria, previous to the year 1730, 

 and we have some few records of animals by name, from that time 

 down to the year 1780, when, through the intelligence and enterprise 

 of some of their younger breeders, they began in considerable num- 

 bers to take position by partial pedigree, as well as name, in a few 

 individual herds. The records of many animals were kept in the 

 private notes of their breeders, in some instances ; in many more 

 instances they were retained only in the memories of their breeders, 

 and in the fallibility of those memories may not in all instances have 

 been correct in certain facts of blood or birth. Yet, such were the 

 only records, and they were not reduced to a permanent shape until 

 the year 1822, when the first volume of the English Herd Book was 

 published; thus the pedigrees of the Short-horns. remained either in 

 private memoranda or tradition, for more than half a century after 

 some of them had acquired individual names, and reputations as 

 prominent and leading animals of their race. Their progress and 

 increasing numbers through those years had been so rapid, and the 

 chances of error in perpetuating their lineage were so many, that an 

 imperative necessity compelled their breeders to place them in a 

 permanent record. 



According to a concise and well-considered narrative, published 

 in "The Country Gentleman" under date of July 27, 1871, over the 

 signature "S.," which we consider competent authority, as was re- 

 ceived by the writer more than twenty years ago, in England, from 

 some of the then living parties who had been active in the proceed- 

 ings, we extract as follows : 



" The English Short-horned Herd Book was originated as a pro- 

 ject some years before its publication. Sir Henry Vane Tempest, a 

 large and capital breeder of Short-horns, held semi-annual agricul- 

 tural meetings in Wynyard Park, his residence, in Durham county, 

 giving prizes for horses, cattle and sheep. These meetings, like those 

 of the Durham Agricultural Society, always were attended by the lead- 

 ing breeders of that county and Yorkshire. At a meeting in the autumn 

 of 1812, there were present, among others, Robert and Charles Col- 

 ling, Mrs. Charles Colling, Mr. Bates, Col. Trotter, Messrs. John and 



