With regard to Wool.

2dly, That the first variety of Pallas, the Tscherkessian or long tailed, are the best wool bearing sheep, carrying naturally an woolly fleece without admixture of hair in all countries where it has been found; except always in the extremes of heat and cold, which turn wool to hair in every variety of the animal.

3dly, That next to the Tscherkefsian, the mixed breed he has named Boucharian, promises the greatest advantages with regard to fleece, if managed with skill and attention by the able and industrious Europeans.

This variety, the 4th and last of our author, is dis tinguished by a tail, thick and fat above, but long and lean below.

4thly, That the Rufsian fheep which constitutes his 2d variety, distinguished by a fhort meagre tail, are a small breed carrying wool of the very coarsest kind, only fit for the dress of the northern peasants in a state of vassalage; although climate, care, and pasture, seem to meliorate it very considerably.

5thly that the large fat rumped, or fat tailed sheep, the variety reared from the frontiers of Europe, to those of China, by almost all the pastoral nations, and the whole of the Nomades; and that which seems to be the most universally reared over the whole globe, as an article of food, from its size and fatnefs, ranks the lowest with regard to fleece; as it carries only a species of coarse wool mixed with hair, in all countries where it has been found and even that very inferior fleece is so matted together, as to

Sept. tia be with difficulty carded, if at all capable of that operation. However that last circumstance observed by Dr Pallas in the Kirguise fheep, may be owing to some local cause.

6thly, That a temperate climate is the most favourable for the production of wool; as extremes of both heat and cold have a tendency to convert it into hair, or at least into a species of wool so extremely coarse, as not to be easily distinguished from it.*

8thly, That saline bitter pastures, have great influence in augmenting the size of theep, as well as in fattening them; at the same time that such pastures have a particular tendency to produce the species of soft oily grease, which forms more especially on the rump and tail of the steatopyga variety of fheep, and is différent from suet, the kind of fat com. mon to ruminating animals.

9thly, That leguminous Alpine plants, especially the astragalit, and a fhrub resembling the robinia

*Of the effect of climate on the wool of fheep, more may be said than could properly come within the compafs of a note. Perhaps this may afford a subject for a separate dissertation. Some farts respecting this subject are ascertained with tolerable accuracy by experiment; others still are doubtful, and require further elucidation, so that I suspect we must here suspend our decision for a little.

Edit.

With regard to the nutritious plants mentioned above by my learned friend, I can say nothing of the shrub resembling a species of robini, as he does not name it; but I believe you have none of the genus to which he compares it. However, surely the mountains of Scotland must be well stored with Alpine plants in general, to which he attributes so much merit; and as for the astragali, which he singles

caragana, when aided by a temperate climate and exercise, have a tendency to produce the largest sized domestic fheep the doctor saw in his travels, even equal to the musimon or wild sheep, which lives and feeds like the flocks of the hills of Dauria, that resemble it so much in bulk. But that these plants

have no tendency to form the soft oily fat mentioned above, which the doctor thinks is only produced by saline bitter pastures."

But, and that sheep choose for food in a state of nature, whilst their instinct is not counteracted by acquired taste, you have three species of ît, viz. Astragalus glycyphillos, or wild liquorice, A. arenarius, or purple mountain wilk wort, and A. uralensis, or silken astragalus.

Arcticus.

*The favourite food of the sheep according to the accurate remarks of the great Swedish botanist and his desciples, is the festuca ovina, or sheeps fescue grafs, and on which they fatten very quickly. This plant is common in dry pastures in Scotland, and certainly could be still much more so by cultivation.

Plants hurtful to Sheep.

After mentioning plants which are eminently salutary to fheep, it certainly will not be foreign to the subject to point out those that are poisonous from the same great authority. Many marsh plants are so. ist, As the anthericum ofsifragum, or marsh asphodel. 2d, The equisetum, or horse tail. 3d, The ranunculus flammula, or lesser spear wort. 4th, The myofotis aquatica, or water mouse ear; and 5th, The kalmia angustifolia, and latifolia, the narrow and broad leaved kalmia, two American plants, the most deadly of all theep poi

sons.

Of these poisonous plants, the first is very common in moorish grounds all over Scotland.

Of the 2d, you have 6 species of marsh plants; but which is meant by the Linnæan school is difficult to guefs; however there is little danger of fheep meddling with what is hard enough to polish wood. The 3d. is common with you by the sides of lakes and ditches; but a Highland

Sept. IT Lothly, That much depends on the care and skill of the shepherd, to meliorate the fleece, augment the size, and correct the form of sheep, even to that of the borns, by pasture, exercise, and above all by the judicious choice of rams, on which much depends; as not alone beauty and other desirable qualities, but deformity and even disease may be propagated and handed down through many generations.

11thly, And lastly, I think one might almost hazard an opinion from Dr Pallas's information, that by care and attention to the fleece of lambs, of the Tcherkefsian, Boucharian, and Tauric varieties, from their birth to a certain age, a valuable fur trade might be carried on with the north and China, where they are in such high estimation with the rich and great, as a winter drefs, even more than our finest Siberian furs, at least in Rufsia and Poland.

Nay even common fheep skins, however coarse, with the care and skill applied to every manufacture in Great Britain, would soon set at defiance all northern competition, and come to the widest market of any article of commerce; as every peasant has an outer winter garb, and most of the superior classes as a morning gown, have at least one sheep skin

man's blister, seems as little tempting to sheep, as the joiner's po

lither.

The 4th is common on the sides of rivulets and lakes in Scotland, And as to the 5th, I hope it will never be brought over to Scotland, even for the botanic garden, if we are to credit Linnaeus, that several fo. reign plants have planted themselves over a whole province, the seeds being carried by the winds from such gardens as they were introduced into for curiosity.

Arcticu

shube coarser or finer in every northern country, wherein the climate requires furs.

I must own however that I am speaking here, (I mean, with regard to the fabrication of fheep skins with the wool on them in Great Britain,) with little or no knowledge of the subject; as the price of wool, hides &c. there, must determine the expediency of the measure: but if I am to judge of the success of one British manufactory by that of another, with pofsibly so per cent against it, on the side of the Rufsians, my speculation will not appear without some foundation. I allude to the curious article of iron purchased originally from this country, and afterwards sold here manufactured, after paying so many duties and charges on both sides the water, cheaper than the natives can afford it; nay this is not confined to the finer articles, for even British iron railing, is sold in Petersburgh cheaper and neater than it can be made in this city from the original iron, although the Rufsians have so great a sum in their favour, if all the charges are reckoned up, from the exportation of the rough, to the sale of the manufactured iron. Surely I say, judging from such an example of the wonderful effects of industry and skill, one would think, that sheep skins, the produce of Great Britain, might at least come to this market with the advantage which superior skill and dressing would give them, over the native manufactories, and that alone, in my opinion, were even the prices. equal, would be sufficient to give them such a preference, as would send them through all the north;