248 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



animals were closely criticised, their defects were such as would exclude 

 most of them from a modern English or American prize-ring. That 

 the American Short-horns have constantly improved in excellence 

 within the last thirty years, and that the average quality of our herds, 

 where skill and care have been bestowed upon them, is now higher 

 than at any previous period, is a fact beyond contradiction in the 

 judgment of accurate observers. 



THE QUALITIES OF PEDIGREES THEIR TITLES TO RECORD IN THE 



HERD BOOKS. 



In our history of the English Herd Book we have learned how 

 its pedigrees were originally gathered and admitted to record. We 

 have seen, too, the lack of certainty attending the genealogy of 

 many animals therein registered. The histories and pedigrees of 

 known animals recorded in the first volume, of the year 1822, had 

 been accumulating in the written memoranda, and also in the mem- 

 ories of men, (a good deal of the latter by tradition only,) for more 

 than eighty years. 



It is not necessary to repeat the circumstances under which the 

 early pedigrees were admitted into the first Herd Book, nor that the 

 same course of admission was pursued in the succeeding volumes 

 edited by the Coateses, father and son, for the next twenty-two years, 

 until 1844, when the labors of the son terminated with the close of 

 the fifth volume. Down to the latter time the five volumes comprised 

 a large majority, probably, of the pedigrees of the British breeders, 

 and in addition to them many American pedigrees which their breed- 

 ers had transmitted across the ocean for record. Yet it must be 

 known that a considerable number of American breeders who had 

 just as well bred cattle at home, and with just as good pedigrees as 

 many that were transmitted, to the Herd Book, did not send their 

 pedigrees forward, and as a consequence they were not recorded 

 in the English volumes. The rule of admission adopted by the 

 Coateses appear to have been that any animals showing a reasonable 

 evidence of descent from good Short-horn blood were entitled to 

 record in the same manner that blooded horses were admitted to the 

 " Stud Book ;" that is, showing a large preponderance of thorough 

 breeding without a known infusion of baser or foreign blood in their 

 veins. Yet there were some exceptions to this rule, as we have seen ; 

 still in the contrarieties of opinion some of that opinion based on 

 certain knowledge, and some of it not as well as in the different 



