A considerable number of pig breeders are influenced in the purchase of a pure bred boar rather than of a sow by the belief that pure bred sows are neither so prolific nor such good mothers as are common bred sows. This belief was even more common in years gone by than it is at the present time, and it must be candidly confessed that there existed substantial grounds for it. Some fifty years since it became fashionable, particularly amongst those who had suddenly become rich by trade or in other ways, to exhibit live-stock at the agricultural shows. They may have been animated by the laudable desire of endeavouring to assist farmers and stock breeders generally, or a desire to gain a place in the sun may have had some slight influence. As the majority of these exhibitors of stock had no special knowledge of stock, they were compelled to place themselves entirely in the hands of their managers and stockman, who generally received by arrangement a certain percentage of the prize money won by the stock. It was then only natural that they gave far more attention to the show points of the animals in their charge than to the breeding qualities. The supply of pedigree animals was also very limited at about the period mentioned so that it was much more difficult to avoid too close breeding, nor was there the same care taken in the private record of the pedigrees of the animals bred. These various causes combined led to a loss of vitality amongst the so-called pedigree stock, and this weakening of the constitution showed itself in a reduction in the number of the offspring and in the power of the dam to furnish its young with a full supply of well-balanced milk. There is little doubt that in the third quarter of the past century a considerable proportion of the pedigree sows were not so prolific as they ought to have been, nor did they produce and rear thoroughly well so many pigs at each litter as the common sow of the country was capable of doing. A more general study of stock breeding has tended to compel attention to the practical apart from the show points of pedigree pigs, but probably the strongest influence has been the formation of the various breed societies, and the registration of the produce including the number, sex, and sire of the pigs. These entries most clearly showed those breeders of pigs who had paid most attention to the utility points of their pigs, especially those particular points in which pedigree pigs were generally believed to be deficient. The succeeding records of sows of the same families afforded the best possible confirmation of the belief which was becoming general that prolificacy like many other qualities was most certainly hereditary. This recorded proof that pure bred animals and especially pigs were not necessarily slow breeders, helped vastly to increase the demand for pedigree animals for crossing purposes in the breeding of commercial stock.