140 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



1807 from the government flock at Eambouillet, and he says: "After 

 my return from Italy, being no longer in office, I obtained permission 

 to ship others that Mr. Ohaptal allowed me to select out of the highest- 

 bred flock in France." Mr. Randall says that he coiild not learn that 

 the latter ever arrived in the country, and one of Livingston's polit- 

 ical enemies, writing in 1810, says that Napoleon Bonaparte, the warm 

 friend of Livingston, had specially detained these sheep after they had 

 been put on board a public vessel. The fact is that these sheep, 11 or 

 12 in number, were put on board the Hope at Bordeaux, and as she 

 was about to sail June 15, 1809, were seized and retained, but whether 

 by special order or in pursuance of the general practice then in vogue 

 of seizing everything, we can not say. One of these sheep had a fleece 

 of 16 pounds. 



Livingston was astonished, upon his return to ]S"ew York in 1805, that 

 the introduction of Merino sheep had excited so little attention, and 

 although the legislature of Connecticut had noticed the patriotic efforts 

 of Col. Humphreys, one of her citizens, none of his sheep had been 

 sold in the State. He had also the mortification to find that, notwith- 

 standing his injunctions, his own had been much less extended than he 

 expected. Nor was it until nearly three years later that the Merinos 

 attracted any special attention. Then, for causes hereafter to be 

 stated, Livingston began to sell his rams for $150 apiece j for a choice 

 one raised by himself, ten months old, he refused $1,000. Half-blood 

 rams and ewes, bred from his Merino rams on common sheep, sold for 

 $12 each. As before noted, Livingston crossed his own importation 

 with the flock descended from Don Pedro, and he was a purchaser of 

 Humphreys sheep and some of the Jarvis importations of 1810, and 

 about the same time bought many Merinos that were purchased by 

 Charles Henry Hall of the Duke de Infantado, at Cadiz, and shipped 

 to the United States in the summer and fall of 1810. 



In 1806 Livingston submitted to the Society of Useful Arts two 

 essays on the subject of Merino sheep, which quickened the attention 

 of intelligent farmers, and the legislature of New York stepped for- 

 ward, legislated in favor of woolen manufactures, and In other ways 

 encouraged the raising of Merino sheep. Many who had never given 

 any attention now began to buy them, and those having common flocks 

 improved them by crossing with the Merino. 



Finding himself frequently called upon for information and being 

 anxious to communicate all that his experience or inquiries had taught 

 him upon the subject, as well as to keep alive the interest that he had 

 excited in his fellow citizens, Livingston believed that both might be 

 effected by the publication of a little volume which should in some sort 

 combine information with amusement, and, taken in connection with 

 what he had before written, serve as a kind of shepherds' manual and 

 point out to the rich and the poor farmer the easiest means of convert- 



