EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 83 



some of them have become the prevailing flocks. They were bred pure 

 in Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, and about 1820 there was 

 a sharp revival of the demand for them. Judge Peters's flock had some- 

 what deteriorated, but at the Pennsylvania cattle show, June 4 and 5, 

 1822, John Hare Powell exhibited 21 sheep of this blood which retained 

 a large portion of the excellence of the original importation of Col. 

 Pickering. Mr. Powell stated that they arrived early at maturity, car- 

 ried good fleeces, afforded delicate mutton, laid their fat well within, and, 

 except the Southdown and the Leicester, were more easily kept than 

 any sheep he could find. The great objection to them was the obstruc- 

 tion opposed to procreation by the un wieldly excrescence adhering to 

 their tails. If an ewe lost her lamb early in the season the chance of 

 impregnation was very small. Various expedients had been resorted 

 to in vain to remove the difficulty, which, when the animal was fat and 

 thoroughbred, it was impossible to obviate, even by the assistance of 

 the shepherd's hand. Mr. Powell had, he believed, the remnant of the 

 best flock which could at any time have been found in Pennsylvania. 

 He had crossed them with Beane's mixed Leicester and Southdown 

 stock, and hoped to obtain the hardiness and fine mutton of the Tunisian 

 with the better form, smaller bone, wider chest, longer fleece, early 

 maturity, and singular tendency towards fat of some of the best indi- 

 viduals of the other family, without the useless incuinbrance of the 

 heavy and broad tail, for it was absurd to propagate a race of animals 

 carrying a fifth quarter in the tail, which, however delicate to the palate 

 of a Turk, was not likely to become fashionable in America. 



The Tunis sheep now had the New Leicester and Southdown to con- 

 tend with, and made but little headway, though its advocates claimed 

 it as the "farmer's sheep" and the most profitable of all breeds, giving 

 a fleece far superior to that of common sheep and a carcass far better 

 than that of any other. As the Leicester sheep increased in number 

 and decreased in price, the Tunis sheep and its crosses gradually dis- 

 appeared. It left its traces in Pennsylvania, however, as late as 1852, 

 where it was still a hardy race, and the first crosses with the common 

 sheep were thought to be particularly valuable as early lambs for 

 market. 



In 1807 or 1808, Commodore Barron, of the U. S. Navy, brought some 

 Tunis sheep into Virginia and the District of Columbia, but they were 

 inferior to those bred by Judge Peters, and the effort to perpetuate the 

 pure blood was a total failure, the physical impediment, the broad tail 

 of the ewe, forbidding it. This was the case, also, in later importations, 

 as in 1823, John S. Skinner, editor of the American Farmer, at Balti- 

 more, who had a pair presented him, expressed his disappointment in 

 them, both as to their capacity to procreate and the quality of the wool, 

 which gave Judge Peters the impression that they were not the true 

 Tunis mountain sheep, for from these he had experienced no trouble in 

 their procreation, and as to the wool, his own Tunis sheep bore fleeces 



