76 THE COW 



promote the sale of their animals at substantial 

 prices, the success of the new venture is assured. 

 Such fiat breed creation is occasionally pursu,ed 

 among our farm animals and very frequently in 

 the case of poultry. It must be said that such 

 efforts serve no useful practice and should be dis- 

 couraged. We have now all the types of farm 

 animals that can be of any real use. A consider- 

 able proportion of those we already have exist 

 mainly for the purpose of winning premiums at 

 fairs and selling stock to those misguided agricul- 

 turists who continually seek some new thing. It 

 will certainly be wiser to spend time and energy 

 on further improvement of our standard types 

 rather than to seek to add to their number. 



It is rather interesting and surprising to note 

 that as far as the exact recording and registry of 

 pedigrees is concerned, the systematic improve- 

 ment of the beef breeds considerably antedates 

 that of dairy cattle. The oldest live-stock registry 

 in the world is the Shorthorn herd-book, the first 

 volume being published by George Coats of York- 

 shire, England, in 1822, and authentic private rec- 

 ords of Shorthorn pedigree date back as far as 

 1750. If exact geneological records extending 

 across many generations are the test, some families 

 of Shorthorns are the aristocrats of the bovine 

 world because the herd-books of the other breeds 

 were founded much later. The first Hereford herd- 

 book goes back to 1846. The oldest American live- 



