When kept among sheep they do not mix with them, but always precede the flock. They prefer feeding separately, are fond of getting upon the tops of hills, and even upon the most steep and craggy parts of the mountains. They find a sufficiency of food on heaths, barren and uncultivated grounds. Great attention is necessary to keep them from corn, vines, and young plantations as they are great destroyers, and eat with avidity the tender barks, and young shoots of trees, and thus prove fatal to their growth. They avoid humid and marshy fields, or rich pastures: they are seldom kept on flat lands, because it does not agree with them, and it makes their flesh ill-tasted. In most warm climates goats are raised in great numbers and never put into the stables. In France they would perish if not preserved from the inclemency of the winter. It is not necessary to give them litter in the summer, though absolutely so in winter; and as all moisture is very hurtful to them they should never be suffered to lie upon their own dung. They should be taken out into the fields very early in the morning, while the dew is on the grass, which, though hurtful to sheep, is very salutary for goats. As they are untractable and wandering animals, the most active and robust man cannot manage more than fifty of them. They should never be suffered to go out during snow or hoar frost, but be kept in the stable, and fed with herbage, small branches of trees gathered in autumn, or on cabbages, turnips, and other roots. The more they eat, the greater is their quantity of milk; to increase and preserve their milk still more, they are made to drink a great deal, and they mix sometimes a little nitre or salt in their water. They may be milked in fifteen days after they have brought forth, and will continue to give a considerable quantity twice a day for four or five months.
The female produces one kid, sometimes two, very rarely three, and never more than four; she continues to breed from one year or eighteen months, until she is seven years of age. The he-goat will propagate as long, and perhaps longer if proper care is taken of him; but he commonly becomes useless at about five. He is then sent to fatten among the old goats, and castrated kids which have been emasculated at six months old, to render their flesh more juicy and tender. They are fattened with great care, in the same manner as wethers, but they are never so good, excepting in very warm climates, where mutton is always ill-tasted. The strong smell of the goat does not proceed from his flesh but his skin. These animals are not permitted to grow old, or perhaps they might live to ten or twelve years; but it is usual to kill them as soon as they cease to multiply, because the older they are the worse is their flesh. Both male and female goats have horns, with a very few exceptions; they vary very much in the colour of their hair: it is said that those which are white, and have no horns, give the most milk, and that the black ones are the strongest. Though they cost very little for their food they produce a considerable profit; their flesh, tallow, hair, and skin, are all valuable commodities. Their milk is more wholesome and better than that of the sheep; it is used in medicine, curdles easily, and makes very good cheese. The females will allow themselves to be suckled by young children, for whom their milk is excellent nourishment. Like cows and sheep, they are sucked by the viper, and also by a bird, called in France, the goat-sucker, which fastens to their teats during the night, and, as some say, makes them lose their milk for ever after.
Goats have no incisive teeth in the upper jaw; those in the under fall out, and are replaced in the same time and manner as those of the sheep. Their age may be ascertained by the knobs in their horns, and their teeth. The number of teeth in the female goats is not always the same, but they usually have fewer than the male, whose hair is also more rough, and who has the beard and horns longer. These animals, like the ox and sheep, have four stomachs, and chew the cud. Their species is more generally diffused than that of sheep, and goats similar to ours are found in many parts of the world; only in Guinea, and other warm climates they are smaller, and in Muscovy and the more northern regions, they are larger. The goats of Angora and Syria, with ears hanging down, are of the same species with ours, as they intermix together, and will produce in these climates: the males have horns almost as long as the common kind, but their directions are very different, they are extended horizontally from each side of the head, and form spirals somewhat like a screw. The horns of the female are short, they bend backwards, then turn down, and their points come forward so as nearly to approach their eyes; but the directions of these sometimes vary. These descriptions are from a male and female goat which I have seen. Like most Syrian animals, their hair was very long and thick, and so fine that stuffs have been made of it almost as handsome and glossy as our silks.
SUPPLEMENT.
Pontoppidan says, that goats abound in Norway, and that more than 80,000 raw hides are annually exported from Bergen alone, besides those which are dressed. But they seem peculiarly calculated for this country, as they search for their food upon high and rugged mountains, are very courageous, and so far from fearing the wolf, will even assist the dogs in repelling their attacks upon the flock.
THE SWINE, THE HOG OF SIAM, AND THE WILD BOAR.
I shall treat of these three at the same time, because they form but one species. The one is wild, and the other two the same animal only domestic; and though they are different in some external marks, and perhaps in some of their habits, yet these differences are not very essential, but relate merely to their condition: they are not much changed by their domestic state; they will intermix and produce fertile individuals; which is the only character that constitutes a distinct and permanent species.
It is singular in these animals that their species seem to be entirely distinct by itself, and not connected with any other, which may be considered as principal or accessory, like that of the horse with the ass, or the goat with the sheep; nor is it subject to a variety of races like the dog; it participates of many species, yet essentially differs from all. Let those who would circumscribe the immensity of nature into narrow systems, attend to this animal, and they will find it surmounts their methodical arrangements. In its extremities it has no resemblance to whole-hoofed animals, being rather cloven-hoofed, and yet it does not resemble them fairly, because though it appears to have but two toes, yet it has four concealed within; nor does the hog resemble those which have the toes separated, since he walks only on two toes, and the other two are neither so placed, nor extended sufficiently, to be made use of in that respect. Shall we consider this as an error in nature, and that these two toes so concealed ought not to be reckoned? If so, it should be remembered that this error is constant: that besides, the other bones of the feet do not resemble cloven-footed animals, and that there are striking differences in many other respects, for the latter have horns and no incisive teeth in the upper jaw, they have four stomachs, chew the cud, &c. while the hog, on the contrary, has no horns, but one stomach, does not chew the cud, and has cutting teeth both above and below; thus it is evident, he neither belongs to the species of hoofed or cloven-footed animals, and with as little propriety can he be ranked among the web-footed animals since he differs from them not only in the extremities of the feet, but in the teeth, stomach, intestines, and internal parts of generation. All that can be said is, that in some respects he forms the shade between the whole and cloven-footed animals, and in others between the cloven-footed and digitated animals; for he differs less from the whole-hoofed quadrupeds in the form and number of his teeth than from others; he also resembles them in the length of his jaw, and, like them, has but one stomach; but by an appendage annexed to it, as well as by the position of the intestines, he seems nearly to approach the cloven-footed animals, or those who chew the cud. He likewise resembles them in the external parts of generation, and at the same time in the make of his legs, habits of body, number of young, he approaches very near to the digitated quadrupeds.