224 On Tunis Sheep, 



POSTSCRIPT. 



When I made the foregoing communication, I had 

 not read Chancellor Livingstones 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 Hogarth^ 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 afibrded *' a basis whereon to engraft his whims." 



The Tunis 7nountain sheep are as much, in my belief, 

 the bona 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 



