On Tunis Sheep. 225 
a most valuable item to the catalogue of domestic ani- 
mals. I claim the exclusion of the Tunis sheep from 
his zoography. 
1. Because in Mr. Livingston’s Lusus Nature, all 
‘the fat of the hinder parts is in the tail.—In the Tunis 
sheep, it is well, and generally, distributed through the 
whole carcase. 
2. In his Hybrids, the caudical fat (for in my recol- 
lection he mentions no other, in any quantity) is, in 
warm climates, oily and soft, and, when melted, will 
not again indurate. In the natural Tunis sheep, all the 
fat is capable of resuming its hardness after melting. I 
have never seen more solid, whiter, or finer mutton 
tallow, in all states of atmospheric temperature, than 
the fat of this sheep affords. — 
The speculations of a mind so ingenious and instruc- 
tive, excited by a laudable desire to inform (though 
there may be some fanciful flights) I leave on their 
own merits. I believe professed naturalists know little 
more than I do, of these, or other secrets of nature. 
The celebrated Buffon is not without a guantum sufficit, 
of what the French call ‘les Egarements de l Esprit,” — 
visionary wanderings. 
The protuberated tail of the Tunis sheep, composed 
of ‘‘ delicate esculent,’? and not of soft fat, as a mere 
‘‘repository,”? and which Mr. ‘Livingston calls ‘ an 
excressence and deformity,” was, no doubt, bestowed 
for wise purposes. By what I have mentioned of the 
difficulty attending the coupling of a common tup with 
a Tunis ewe, i¢ would seem, that this guard was given 
to her, and other broad tailed sheep, to prevent mixture 
with a different species of animal ; which the author of 
VOL. II. rf 
