ameuigan agriculture. 
441 
to a request for suggestions, I remarked that the same rule ought to 
be applied to English breeders and to imported stock as to Ameri¬ 
can breeders and home-bred animals. If not, why not? 
I have got Cotswold sheep imported from the best breeders in 
England, but I have never yet happened to see a pedigree of En¬ 
glish sheep or English pigs that was worth the paper on which it 
was written. I do not say that English sheep and pigs are not 
pure, but I do say that, as a rule, the records do not prove it. And 
I think that far greater latitude is allowed the English breeders of 
sheep and swine than is allowed to American breeders. When we 
get imported animals, we put numbers in their ears and keep the 
stock pure. No reputable breeder resorts to crosses. And we can 
furnish longer pedigrees of Cotswold sheep, Essex, Berkshire and 
Suifolk pigs in this country than are usually furnished by English 
breeders. 
I saw, sometime since, the pedigree of an imported Essex boar. 
The dam took this and that prize — the sire was never beaten at 
any show, and so of the grand-dam, and the grand-sire was the cel¬ 
ebrated boar something-or other, “the progenitor of the race.” 
Talk of short pedigrees! Why, it has been claimed, and perhaps 
justly, that Chester White and Poland China pigs are not estab¬ 
lished breeds because ten oi a dozen or a score of generations back 
the pedigree, if they have any, runs back into the American woods, 
and yet here is a pig, bought in England at a high price, that two 
or three generations carries him back to the “ progenitor of the 
race. 
To the American breeder the future looks bright. If we keep 
our sheep and swine pure, if we weed out vigorously, if we keep 
accurate records and breed for definite, correct and useful objects, 
it will not be many years before we shall not only have a great de¬ 
mand from our own widely-extended land, but from Europe, Asia 
and Australia, and that at prices which will liberally compensate 
us for all our skill, labor and patient waiting. We shall not be able 
to make as fine a display in the show-yard, but our animals will be 
far more valuable for the purpose of improving common stock, than 
those which are more promiscuously bred, and intelligent fanners 
and breeders will not be long in finding it out. 
We all feel that America is destined to be the greatest country 
in the world. There is nothing lacking. We have abundance of 
