FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 33 



suits to be able to give much of his personal attention 

 to breeding. His sheep improved, and were of good 

 quality, but he established no distinct family, of special 

 value, which has survived until the present time. 



In the same year with Mr. Livingston's first im- 

 portation (1802), Colonel Humphreys,* the American 

 Minister in Spain, being about to return from that 

 country, after an official residence in it of seven years, 

 brought home with him a flock of Merinos. I quote 

 the following statements from his " Dissertation," &c., 

 addressed to the Massachusetts " Society for Promoting 

 Agriculture" (August 25, 1802) : 



" Convinced that this race of sheep, of which, I be- 

 lieve, not one had been brought to the United States 

 until the importation by myself, f might be introduced 

 with great benefit to our country, I contracted with a 

 person, of the most respectable character, to deliver to 

 me, at Lisbon, one hundred, composed of twenty-five 

 rams and seventy-five ewes, from one to 'two years old. 

 They were conducted with proper passports, across 

 the country of Portugal, by three Spanish shepherds, 

 and escorted by a small guard of Portuguese soldiers. 

 On the tenth of April last they were embarked in the 

 Tagus, on board the ship Perseverance, of 250 tons, 

 Caleb Coggeshall, master. In about fifty days, twenty- 

 one rams, and seventy ewes were landed at Derby, 

 Connecticut, they having been shifted, at ISTew York, 



* He was an aide-de-camp of Washington in the Eevolution, and an 

 inmate of his family at Mount Yernon from 1788 to 1790. He was an 

 elegant, learned, and public-spirited gentleman. 



f Livingston said his own "arrived safely in the spring of 1802, and 

 were, he believed, the first couples ever imported into the United 

 States." (Pref. to Essay,) It is probable, therefore, Livingston's 

 arrived a little the earliest. The point is of no consequence, but I am 

 told it created some feeling in its day. 



