But it is to be observed, that the sacred writers mention not the moth, but the minute worm, which changes into a moth, and which alone gnaws the garments. In the passages which have been quoted, the word “moth” must be understood to signify the larva[367] of the clothes-moth (Phalæna Vestianella, Linn.), or of some insect of the same kind.
[367] When an insect first issues from the egg, it is called by naturalists larva.
CHAPTER IV.
GOATS-HAIR.
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE GOAT—ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES, ETC.
Sheep-breeding and Goats in China—Probable origin of sheep and goats—Sheep and goats coeval with man, and always propagated together—Habits of Grecian goat-herds—He-goat employed to lead the flock—Cameo representing a goat-herd—Goats chiefly valued for their milk—Use of goats’-hair for coarse clothing—Shearing of goats in Phrygia, Cilicia, &c.—Vestes caprina, cloth of goats’-hair—Use of goats’-hair for military and naval purposes—Curtains to cover tents—Etymology of Sack and Shag—Symbolical uses of sack-cloth—The Arabs weave goats’-hair—Modern uses of goats’-hair and goats’-wool—Introduction of the Angora or Cashmere goat into France—Success of the project.
The inquiry into the origin and propagation of the Goat, no less than that of the sheep, may justly be considered a subject for interesting investigation. Goats were no less highly prized by the ancient inhabitants of Greece and Italy than by the modern. We have seen, that the great value of sheep always consisted in its fleece. The goat, on the contrary, was more valued for the excellence and abundance of its milk, and for its suitableness to higher and more rugged and unproductive land [368].
[368] Virgil, Georg. iii. 305-321.
We observe a clear allusion to this distinction between the principal uses of sheep and of goats in the twenty-seventh chapter of the book of Proverbs[369]. The management and use of goats has from time immemorial formed a striking feature in the condition of man, and especially of those nations which belong to the Caucasian, or, as Dr. Prichard more properly denominates it, the Iranian or Indo-Atlantic variety of our race [370]. Their habits of sheep-breeding seem no less characteristic than the form of their countenances, a no less essential part of their manner of life than any other custom, by which they are distinguished: and, as all the circumstances, which throw any light upon the question, conspire to render it probable, that the above-mentioned variety of the human race first inhabited part of the high land of central Asia, so it is remarkable, that our domestic sheep and goats may with the greatest probability be referred to the same stock with certain wild animals, which now overspread those regions. The sheep, as has been already observed in chapter I., is regarded as specifically the same with the Argali; and in the opinion of Pallas, which has been very generally adopted by zoologists, the goat is the same with the Ægagrus, a gregarious quadruped, which occupies the loftiest parts of the mountains extending from the Caucasus to the South of the Caspian Sea, and thence to the North of India [371]. Indeed the history of these animals is so interwoven with the history of man, that those naturalists have not reasoned quite correctly, who have thought it necessary to refer the first origin of either of them to any wild stock at all. They assume, that these quadrupeds first existed in an undomesticated state, that is, entirely apart from man and independent of him; that, as he advanced in civilization, as his wants multiplied, and he became more ingenious and active in inventing methods of supplying them, the thought struck him, that he might obtain from these wild beasts the materials of his food and clothing; and that he therefore caught and confined some of them and in the course of time rendered them by cultivation more and more suitable to his purposes.
[369] “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds. The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of thy field; and thou shalt have goats’ milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance of thy maidens.” Prov. xxvii. 23, 26, 27.