216 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



Men did not care for a record made up of names 

 unhonored and unworthy, or at best in the 

 broad belt of mediocrity. It was only the 

 offspring of the phenomenally good animals 

 whose record of descent was valued. So not 

 unnaturally a vulgar idea sprang up that to 

 have a pedigree was a mark of distinction ; for 

 if the animal was not royally descended no 

 such record would have been preserved at all, 

 but the ancestors would have been permitted 

 to sink into deserved oblivion. From this atti- 

 tude the transition was easy to a general idea 

 that there was some necessary excellence at- 

 tached to the pedigree, and thence, to an open 

 valuing of an animal for the pedigree, was a 

 facile progression. The want of logic in such 

 steps is only equaled by the lightness with 

 which they have again and again been taken. 

 We have all known men who endeavor to piece 

 out the small stature accorded to them by Nat- 

 ure with the by-gone greatness of a father or a 

 grandfather. We have all seen men deceived 

 by the pretenses of such men, and toadying to 

 them for this reason, while the soberer heads 

 and clearer judgments of most men have be- 

 thought them of the frog that tried to puff 

 himself out to the bulk of the bull. Nor is 

 the case less amusing though often seen of a 

 miserable brute being lauded to the skies for 

 no other reason than that some remote ances- 



