242 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



years, he had imported and skillfully cultivated. The show of 

 Short-horns was numerous, and unequaled in quality at any previous 

 exhibition which had taken place in the United States, many costly 

 and lately imported ones being on the ground. With a single excep- 

 tion the important prizes were all won and promptly paid. 



During the exhibition a copy of the American Herd Book fell 

 into the hands of Mr. Brutus J. Clay, one among the many liberal 

 and large Short-horn breeders of Kentucky. He had never before 

 seen it. On looking it over, and considering the importance of a 

 continuation of the work, after consulting with several of the larger 

 breeders of his own and other States present, he proposed to its 

 editor the publication of a second volume, with a remunerating price 

 attached to it, and urged its prosecution. With this encouragement 

 the second volume was undertaken, a prospectus circulated, and sev- 

 eral hundred contributors sent their pedigrees for publication. In 

 the year 1855 the Book was issued, with 980 bull pedigrees, added 

 to those of the first volume, making up the whole number to 1170. 

 In addition to the bulls, a much larger number of cows were recorded, 

 making altogether, with the introductory matter included, a well-sized 

 octavo of about six hundred pages. Thus was promptly established 

 the necessity of an AMERICAN Herd Book. 



The second volume, it must be recollected, was compiled nine 

 years after the first one of the American, and eleven years after 

 the fourth and fifth volumes of the English Herd Book had been 

 given to the public, in which latter ones the great majority of Amer- 

 ican pedigrees, published in England, either before or since, were 

 recorded. During so long an interregnum the American pedigrees 

 had remained in the private memorandums of their breeders, or if 

 published at all, were only so in the scattered agricultural papers of 

 the day, with no surety that even there the records would be'perma- 

 nently kept. Meantime, many breeders had given up and sold out 

 their herds ; others had died, while a considerable majority of them 

 sedulously held on to their stocks, bred them well, kept their pedi- 

 grees correctly, and sent them to the second volume of the American 

 Herd Book for record. 



At that time there were not a dozen full sets of the English Herd 

 Book in America, aside from the few odd volumes, scattered about in 

 the hands of different breeders. It may, therefore, be supposed 

 that a chaotic mass of material was poured into the hands of the 

 editor for examination, compilation, and revision, a labor of most exact- 

 ing kind, involving a great amount of toil and investigation, to say 



