SUPPLEMENT.
Besides the Syrian goat, which we formerly mentioned as having pendulous ears, there is a species in Madagascar, which are much larger, and with pendulous ears so long, that they hang entirely over their eyes, which obliges the animal to be almost continually throwing them back, and therefore whenever pursued, he invariably makes to the rising ground. The accounts which we received of this animal came from M. Comerson, but were not sufficiently particular to determine whether it was a different species or only a variety of the Syrian race with pendulous ears.
M. le Vicomte de Querhoënt says, that the goats left on Ascension Island have increased abundantly, but they appear very thin, and so weak, that men can often outrun them; they are of a very dark brown, much less than our goals, and in the nights conceal themselves in the holes of the mountains.
There is a species of goat found in Hungary, Poland, Tartary, and in South Siberia, which the Russians call Saigak, or Saiga; it bears a resemblance to the domestic goat in the shape of its body and its hair; but by the form of the horns, and the want of a beard, it approaches nearer to the antelopes, and, in fact, appears to be the shade between those two animals; for the horns of the saiga are in every respect like those of the antelope; they have the same form, transverse rings, longitudinal streaks, &c. and they differ only by the colour. The horns of the antelopes are black and opaque; those of the saiga, on the contrary, are whitish and transparent. Gesner has mentioned this animal under the name of colus, and Gmelin under that of saiga. The horns which are in the royal cabinet, were sent under the denomination of the horns of the Hungarian buck; they are so transparent and so clear, that they are used for the same purpose as tortoise-shell.
The saiga, by its natural habits, resembles more the antelopes, than the wild or chamois goats; for it does not delight in mountainous countries, but lives on the hills and plains. Like them also he moves by bounds and leaps; he is very swift, and his flesh much better eating than that of either the tame or wild goat.[U]