PEDIGREE. 219 



ancestors excellence. Some have been neg- 

 lected, and declined from insufficient food or 

 want of other things necessary to vigorous 

 physical existence ; some have deteriorated 

 from close interbreeding, while others have 

 suffered from injudicious crosses with inferior 

 stocks. To look at a pedigree, then, only so far 

 as the first half-dozen crosses are concerned, 

 when there are a dozen represented in it, is by 

 no means to know anything of the character 

 of the animal to which it belongs. The early 

 crosses may stand out as the best in all the 

 breed ; not a line may run outside of the very 

 choicest strains or be represented by any but 

 a famous name; and yet if the last six crosses 

 are represented by mere names, while the cat- 

 tle that bore them were poor, underfed, con-> 

 sumptive wrecks, or the victims of other kinds 

 of misfortune or mismanagement, no man 

 could expect, with any justness, good results 

 from such a pedigree. We can only expect good 

 animals from others that are good ; and if the 

 two animals in the first generation and the four 

 in the second are bad it is only in rare cases of 

 peculiar change of condition for the better that 

 the excellence of great-grandsires exerts a con- 

 trolling influence for good in a great-grandson. 

 If every ancestor in a pedigree, on the other 

 hand, stands for merit of a high class, and these 

 many strains of meritorious blood are all 



