90 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



spring crops are forward and good. And this subject induces mo to offer 

 the following extract of a letter lately received from the Bahamas: 



"There are no wild animals on these islands, except a small rabbit or 

 coney, and rats and mice. Of domestic animals they have horses, cattle, 

 sheep, goats, hogs, dogs, cats and asses. All these, and the rats and mice, 

 have been imported. It is a fact quite obvious that none of these flourish 

 here. They have the domestic cock and hen, Guinea hens, pea-fowl, geese, 

 ducks and turkeys. None of these thrive but the common hen and Guinea 

 hen varieties. For these two kinds of fowl the climate is admirable; but 

 food is scarce, except so far as it is made up of insects and reptiles. The 

 hens lay, and hatch, and multiply, and are healthy, but they are never fat, 

 and never fatted — but they might be. 



" I will state some facts that it would be well for all who raise stock to 

 consider when choosing location for cattle-growing, or rather stock raising. 

 In the earl}' days of the Bahamas, when slavery existed, these islands were 

 occupied by proprietors who were able to, and who did, import a fine stock 

 of English and Spanish horses; they gave much attention to breeding, had 

 races and fairs. The imported horses were of the usual size and form of 

 the English and Spanish breeds. Now the native-grown horses, descen- 

 dants of this stock, are mere ponies, eight or ten hands high, light in body 

 and limb, and miserable in form. The same change is as marked in horned 

 cattle. They are even more changed and miserable than the horses, and 

 there are reasons why the horse should have deteriorated the most rapidly, 

 which I will not stop to supply. Sheep have rapidly deterioi-ated, consid- 

 ered as wool-bearing animals. They have a little coarse wool, that little 

 on the back, but on the legs, belly, flank, and well up on the sides the 

 covering is hair, not better nor diiferent from that of the goat. I have 

 been assured that an individual sheep imported here will in a short time, 

 and during the life of that individual, suffer a change of wool to hair. 

 This I doubt, and find no means of verifying; but that in a few genera- 

 tions sheep cease to bear wool here is obvious on all sides. The body of 

 the sheep becomes slender, his legs long, and he becomes black ()r reddish 

 brown. The mutton is of good flavor, perhaps because it is never fat, but 

 whether from that cause or not, the mutton is good to the taste. 



" Hogs are almost universally black and small, the flesh soft and strong. 

 It is said white hogs do not thrive, the sun cracking and producing disease 

 of the skin. The hogs run to head amazingly, and the hind-quarters 

 dwindle to a point, assuming rapidly the form of the wild hog. Asses and 

 mules are growing small, like the horse stock, and are now so small as to 

 be of little worth for draft animals, and quite too small for riding. The 

 goat here as everywhere is least affected by adverse circumstances, but 

 even the the goat is inferior to ours, and is by no means the happy philo- 

 sopher he ig with us. Dogs, whatever the blood, degenerate into curs. I 

 take the Bahamas to be a situation extremely unfavorable to the growth 

 of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs and asses; by reason doubtless of the climate, 

 they all deteriorate. The conclusion is, that this climate and such tropical 

 climates are to be avoided entirely by the stock-grower; and as for sheep, 

 the argument of a cold climate for fine wool is helped by this extreme 



