THE AMERICAN HERD BOOK. 243 



nothing of the patience required in dissecting, patching together, and 

 arranging such promiscuous and miscellaneous matter into intelligible 

 shape. But, such as it was, the labor was done. It is but justice to 

 say, however, that very many of the pedigrees were made out by their 

 breeders in admirable order, with a spirit of truth and integrity 

 to have them recorded in a manner challenging the most critical 

 investigation ; while others, not familiar with keeping pedigrees, and 

 less methodical in their memoranda, sent in a mass of material incon- 

 gruous in manner, almost illegible in manuscript, and desperate in the 

 hieroglyphics composing the names of their cattle, as well as wrong 

 figures in their numbers. The compilation of these last was truly a 

 job, and such as under no other circumstances would be again under- 

 taken at least by the compiler of that Herd Book. 



As may be supposed, some errors in name, birth, and genealogy, 

 crept into the work. Still, it was welcomed and encouraged by the 

 breeders, with 'a further wish that it should be continued, and in 1857 

 a third volume was issued, containing 1298 bulls, and a considerably 

 larger number of cows, swelling the whole number of the former to 

 2,468, and several hundred more of the latter. This third volume 

 also contained sixty-eight corrections of errors in the pedigrees of 

 bulls, and about one hundred corrections of errors in the pedigrees 

 of cows that were inserted in the second volume. Many of the errors 

 were, however, of a trivial kind, not seriously affecting the integrity 

 of the pedigrees, while some others were important ; yet, being thus 

 promptly corrected, the lines of their lineage were not affected, the 

 produce being properly recorded in successive volumes ; and thus the 

 work, through varying fortunes, has continued to the publication of 

 its eleventh volume in the year 1872, in all containing more than 

 30,000 pedigrees ; but the issue of the first six volumes never paid 

 the compiler and publisher a penny of pecuniary profit labor and time 

 thrown in. 



We have thus detailed at so much length the history of the Eng- 

 lish and American Herd Books to illustrate the zeal and painstaking 

 labor of the meritorious class of men who, for a century past, have 

 spent their energies to ennoble and improve the valuable race of 

 animals to which their attentions have been devoted ; and not alone 

 for the private gains anticipated in their cultivation, for on the other 

 hand many of the breeders have suffered large pecuniary sacrifices 

 in their efforts, through various calamities, from one cause or another, 

 which they encountered in their herds. 



