224. On Tuns Sheep. 
POSTSCRIPT. 
When I made the foregoing communication, I had 
not read Chancellor Livingston’s account of broad-tailed 
sheep; in his essay pages 27 & seq. He has my 
sincere thanks, and is entitled to the acknowledgments. 
of all farmers, for much valuable information promul- 
ged in this essay; however widely I may differ in 
opinion on some points. My accidentally meeting with 
the essay, has compelled me to pursue further, a sub- 
ject I had conceived closed. 
By my perusal of it I am satisfied, that he is entirely 
unacquainted with the sheep I have mentioned. If he 
had not so been, I know his candour too well to suppose, 
he would have omitted to make them an exception to 
the worthless and spurious race he has described. To 
the character and qualities of my sheep, his description 
is a perfect contrast. It would furnish, in the hands of 
a pupil of Logarth, not even a tolerable caricature. 
Those Mr. Livingston pourtrays are not, as he asserts, 
an original race ; but one produced by nature in a spor- 
tive freak; assisted, as he alledges, by ‘‘the art of 
man ;”? who took an undue advantage of her aberration, 
which afforded ‘‘ a basis whereon to engraft his whims,” 
The Tunis mountain sheep are as much, in my belief, 
the Jona fide and unsophisticated descendants of an ori- 
ginal stock, as are the portions of the human race in- 
habiting the regions wherein they are found. They are 
therefore not comprehended in the account he gives 
of the hybridous intruders into animal existence. If 
they were even a sportive production, it would have 
been a most fortunate gambol ; for it would have added 
f 
