Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 1 (2004), p. 120

Several years ago (and against my better judgement) I attended a meeting at which an internationally celebrated breeder of performance horses discussed his approach towards pedigree breeding. Questioned on the issue of chromosome segregation at meiosis by a somewhat querulous geneticist who had spent much of his career studying mice, the breeder (himself of impeccable bloodline) loftily retorted that what may well apply to the mouse couldn’t possibly apply to the ‘noble animal’. And therein rests enshrined much of the purblind ignorance characterizing the pedigree breeding world until recent years. Happy enough with Galtonian eugenic notions, pedigree breeders ignored the revelations of Mendelian genetics in their obsession with male pedigrees, distrusted the arguments of scientists, and even with the development of population genetics in the mid-twentieth century, saw little reason to alter their approach which they divined as an ‘art’ rather than a ‘science’. Even today, the last fifty years’ advances in genetics have done little to change the fundamentals of pure breeding which remain in principle much the same as the techniques applied by Bakewell, Bates and the Collings brothers to Shorthorn cattle, William E.Mason and Samuel Untermayer to Collie dogs and Lady Judith Wentworth to Arab horses.

It is to these animals that Margaret E.Derry (herself a breeder) turns her attention in this engaging and carefully researched book. Central to Derry’s six chapters in which she discusses the breeding of Shorthorns, Collies and Arabians since the early nineteenth century is the basic theme that breeding ideology and the growth of internal and transatlantic markets were closely intertwined in the creation of purebred animals. Whatever may have been the absurdities of the obsession with ‘show’ points, the craving for ‘prettiness’ or the mistaken belief that ‘quality’ was invariably linked to pure blood or a specific coat colour, the market was a profoundly important driver in breed evolution. This applied as much to J.P.Morgan and Albert Payson Terhune who wrote extensively of Collie genealogy and the connection between human and canine values, as to Judy Blunt Lytton, Lady Wentworth (d. 1957) who did so much to establish the international trade in Arab horses, or thoselate nineteenth-century Shorthorn breeders who capitalized successfully on the transatlantic trade. Economics aside, the trade in pedigree animals was closely regulated and Derry writes at length on methods of registration and recording by way of Coates Herd Book, the Arabian Horse Registry of America, which strongly influenced the dynamics of a global Arabian industry, and the Kennel Clubs of Great Britain and the USA whose membership strove manfully to eliminate the corruption and fraudulence associated with the dog-breeding world of the earlier nineteenth century. The pedigree world was (and even to some extent remains) a socially exclusive milieu, dominated by fashion, faddism and fancy and driven by passionate idealism and not a little greed. People who argue over whether the red, white or roan colouring of a cow is linked to utility or whether the set of the ears or shape of the nose of a dog relates to its temperament tend to fall upon bad times, and Derry’s exposition of the economics of the Arab world is not short on examples of penal taxation, bankruptcy and divorce. In a sense the book is a detailed study of obsession, of the conflict between pedigree and commercial concerns and of the unspoken belief among breeders that line breeding of animals and line breeding of people amounted, as Harriet Ritvo noted, to much the same thing!

While Derry’s volume admirably exposes the foibles and eccentricities of pedigree breeders and discusses the many factors motivating their activities, it is largely devoid of background genetic theory or statistical data. We learn little of the problems of inbreeding depression or of inbreeding theory central to the business of pedigree breeding itself; the term ‘variety’ is sometimes applied incorrectly, and other terms such as ‘beefing quality’ are used without any indication of implications for physical conformation. In the discussion of Shorthorn cattle, of which the early-maturing beef type came to dominate the world cattle trade, there is virtually no mention of the Dairy Shorthorn which became so vitally important to the British farming economy, while it would have been useful to have read of the extent to which the transatlantic trade in Arabian horses was paralleled in other equine breeds. Equally, the narrative would have benefited from some discussion of the nature/nurture argument which rumbled through the nineteenth century, provoked, in the horse world at least, by the writings of Osmer, Wall and others the century previously. But these are minor criticisms of omission. The historian of livestock, ideally equipped with a decent undergraduate textbook of genetics, will find much to learn and much to enjoy in Dr Derry’s book and its very valuable tailpiece essay on her sources. Her multi-faceted story is generously illustrated throughout with bovine, canine and equine dramatis personae, including ‘Lad’ (1902–1918) who brought tears to many an eye and, along with Eric Knight’s ‘Lassie’, established the popularity of the Collie breed in the middle of the last century. The book is largely free of the usual typos although I have a sneaking suspicion that DrDerry will feel less than charitably disposed towards the Johns Hopkins proof-reader who failed to spot the reference to ‘pubic pedigrees’ on page 66. On the other hand, I have probably missed the point!