Page:An Account of Corsica (1769).djvu/81

Rh There are here a vast number of goats, which browse upon the wild hills, and put one in mind of Virgil's Bucolicks, where mention is so often made of this animal. Sheep are also very plentiful, and have fine feeding; so that their mutton is as sweet and juicy as one could desire, and attones for the badness of the beef.

The Corsican sheep are generally black, or of a dusky colour; a white sheep being here and there to be met with in a flock, as black ones are amongst our sheep. The wool is coarse and hairy, which the people of the country impute to their sheep being of a mongrel race. They have had thoughts of helping this, by importing a good breed from England or Spain. But I have been told by the breeders of sheep, that the quality of wool is not so much owing to the kind of sheep, as to the nature of their pasture; for those sheep, who bear very rough fleeces when upon one farm, will, when put upon another of a different soil, bear fleeces exceedingly fine. It is very common here, for sheep to have more horns than two: many of them have six.

The forests of this island abound in deer. And there is here a curious animal, called a Muffoli. It resembles a stag, but has horns like a ram, and a skin uncommonly hard. It is very wild, and