260 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



adopted in the English Herd Book, which is our standard authority, 

 they cannot be consistently ruled out of the classification. 



Another thing should be recollected by the breeders who claim 

 that their own herds are untainted by these remotely questionable 

 pedigrees. Their own superior bulls and cows, as they term them, 

 find frequent and some of their best customers among the breeders 

 of the 1817 and other early non-pedigreed imported stocks, and there 

 need exist no jealousy on the part of the untainted pedigree breeders 

 that their own bloods are to be cheapened by reason of the others 

 being tolerated. There is room and scope for all in our broad and 

 rapidly developing country, and so long as individual choice in bloods 

 and pedigrees is open to the public, superior merit, both in pedi- 

 gree and quality, will assert its claims in the judgment of all who 

 have an eye to the improvement of their stocks. 



If it be objected against those far-away slightly tainted stocks 

 that they (as may possibly be the case) throw out an occasional 

 progeny betraying the foreign blood, let it be also understood that 

 an occasional defective product of even the most approved tribes 

 is also witnessed. It is simply nonsense to assert that even the best 

 of blood will, in every individual instance, breed its own like in its 

 descendants. Animal nature is always exceptional, more or less, in 

 the production of its kind, from humanity itself, down to the lowest 

 grades of domesticated things, and we must submit to results as we 

 find them, doing the best we can, meanwhile, by proper means and 

 care, to promote the most successful issues to our labors. 



NOTES ON BREEDING. 



After the exhaustive, and possibly tiresome historical matter we 

 have recorded, the reader and breeder will hardly expect from us an 

 essay on the proper breeding of Short-horns as a basis of instruction 

 to further efforts in the improvement of his stock. Numerous essays 

 have been written, various in theory and opinion some wisely, and 

 some not which have been studied by thoughtful physiologists and 

 breeders, frequently with profit, and sometimes without. Our own 

 ideas on this important subject have been given in a work lately 

 issued from the press, entitled "AMERICAN CATTLE, THEIR HISTORY, 

 BREEDING, AND MANAGEMENT," which can be obtained at almost any 

 of the book collections of the agricultural papers in the country. 

 We have little, if anything, to say in addition to what has been 

 written there, and to that work we refer the inquirer, if he wishes 



