82 SHEEP INDUSTRY OP THE UNITED STATES 



the Tunis was the best of all for meat and sold more readily than any 

 other. Another butcher confirms all these statements, " save that I 

 have known some sheep, especially some of the Leicester breed from 

 IfTew Jersey, lay on fat as well;" but the lambs were always fine, and 

 the meat the best color of any mutton he ever knew. 



Full twenty years after these statements were made, Philadelphia 

 butchers stUl testified to the great value of this blood by the assertion 

 that their market was never so well supplied with early fat lambs as 

 after the introduction and spread of that breed by Judge Peters. 



When Judge Peters sent the ram to his friend Gen. Hand, at Lan- 

 caster, the Germans there would not, at first, permit any connection 

 with their ewes. Gen. Hand was obliged to buy 30 or 40 to set an 

 example. The Germans considered it as an unnatural connection, but 

 when the Philadelphia butchers sought for the lambs, and good prices 

 were given for them and the wool, they changed their opinion and put 

 money in the purse by raising them. 



The original ram and ewe — CaramelU and Selima — were both killed by 

 dogs, the ewe giving a lamb at 16. " They will, perhaps," says Judge 

 Peters, " become memorable as the first emigrants to our country from 

 this branch of the extensive family of the Laticundw." 



Some data concerning the crosses of the Tunis sheep are preserved. 

 In the spring, of 1809 Dr. Kent, of Prince George County, Md., sheared 

 11 pounds of fine wool from a yearling — a cross with a common sheep 

 and a half-blood Tunis ram. On October 30, 1810, John Tayloe, of 

 Mount Airy, Eichmond, Va., offered for sale "a beautiful flock" of ram 

 lambs from the Barbary he had mixed with the finest Virginia ewes. 



In the spring of 1825 a wether 4 years old, mixed Leicester and Tunis 

 blood, was sold in the market at Trenton, 'S. J., for $90, and when re- 

 tailed brought the butcher $122.40. The total weight of the quarters 

 was 148 pounds. The saddle weighed 83 pounds, and was sold for $83 ; 

 the skin and fleece 19J pounds, $20, and the other parts $19.40. The 

 rough tallow weighed 26 pounds. 



At the time Judge Peters called public attention to his Tunis sheep 

 the Merino craze was upon the country and absorbed nearly all the 

 interest of the farmers and speculators. In addition, the usual short- 

 sighted practice among farmers of selling to the butchers or in the 

 markets the best lambs and sheep and keeping only the most unsal- 

 able, deteriorated the breed most lamentably, and those who had charge 

 of Judge Peters's flock had their share in this culpability. Several 

 butchers posted breeders from his stock in Kew Jersey and Delaware. 

 The progeny were slaughtered in the markets. This naturally dimin- 

 ished the multiplication of the breed, yet the number produced from 

 the original pair was surprising, even under circumstances not always 

 encouraging, and the blood was extensively diffused. But for the in- 

 troduction of the fine-wooled Merino, these Tunisian sheep would prob- 

 ably have been disseminated throughout the United States, and in 



