232 Note, on Tunis Sheep. 
ss eee 
No class of animals exhibits a more curious and extensive 
variety than that of the Simie. With whatever contempt, 
disgust, or levity, they may be commonly regarded, they 
afford one of the strongest instances ot countless diversities, 
both as to forms and capacities, to be found, in any one 
species, in the animal kingdom. 
It is better to take things as they are, without speculating 
in unsatisfactory hypothesis; to which estimable men, of 
otherwise highly useful talents and propensities, too fre- 
quently addict themselves. Nature, in sober truth, is only 
secondary ; and regulated by 
** The universal cause, 
Who “acts to one end, but acts by various laws.” 
The omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness of the creator, are 
shewn in nothing more wonderfully, than in the endless va- 
riety of his works. We are not therefore to consider as un- 
natural, what is to us uncommon. All things were created 
perfect in their kinds. Animals (to fit them ior dispersion to 
replenish the earth) were suited in their forms and systems, 
to the spheres in which they were respectively to live and 
move. Anomalous varieties are exceptions ; produced by cli- 
mate, accidental mixtures, and sometimes, ’tis true, by the 
intervention of the art of man. But these, and especially the 
latter, are limited in their extent and duration; and do not 
spread over vast regions of the earth ; nor uniformly pervade 
whole species, and successive races and generations. 
eee 
11th August 1810. [have never known ’till this day, that 
some Tunis sheep have been brought into Virginia, or the 
Columbia district, five or six years ago, by Commodore Baron. 
I congratulate those who possess them on this acquisition. 
I earnestly wish they may be more sensible of their value, 
than have been those on whom I had the task of operating, 
