The Aoudad, or Arui
This is a large wild type of the North African highlands. It stands intermediate between sheep and goats. The old rams have a very fine appearance, with a long flowing beard or mane, and large horns. These wild animals, though somewhat goat-like in appearance, are typical of the sheep race in general habits. They live in the Atlas Range, and in the splendid heights of the Aures Mountains, which lie at the back of Algeria and fringe the great Sahara Desert. In the isolated and burning rocks which jut up in the desert itself into single mountains they are also found, living on ground which seems absolutely destitute of water, grass, or vegetation. They live singly or in small families; but the rams keep mainly alone. Sometimes they lie in shallow caves during the heat of the day. These caves smell like a sheepfold. More generally the aoudad reposes on some shelf of rock, where it matches the color of the stone, and is almost invisible. The ground is one of the most difficult in which any hunting is attempted, except perhaps in chamois-stalking; but the pursuit seems to fascinate sportsmen.
Mr. A. E. Pease gives some charming descriptions of the silence, the rugged rocks, and the astonishing views over the great orange Sahara Desert seen from the tops of these haunts of the aoudad—mountains on the summits of which his Arab guides would prostrate themselves in evening prayer as the sun sank over the desert, and then, rising, once more resume the chase. The young of the aoudad are charming little creatures, much like reddish kids. They can follow the mother over the steepest ground at a great pace. When caught, as they sometimes are by the Arabs, they soon become tame.
GOATS AND GOAT-ANTELOPES.
| 1. Asiatic Tahr. | 3. Rocky Mountain White Goat. |
| 2. Alpine Ibex. | 4. African Aoudad. |
| 5. Arctic Musk-Ox. | |
The Goats
Though the dividing-line between the sheep and goats is very indistinct, some differences are of general application. The goats are distinguished by the unpleasant odor of the males, and by beards on the chins of the same sex, by the absence of glands in the hind feet, which sheep possess, and by certain variations in the formation of the skull. The difference between the temperament of the sheep and goats is very curious and persistent, showing itself in a marked way, which affects their use in domestication to such a degree that the keeping of one or the other often marks the owners as possessors of different degrees of civilization. Goats are restless, curious, adventurous, and so active that they cannot be kept in enclosed fields. For this reason they are not bred in any numbers in lands where agriculture is practised on modern principles; they are too enterprising and too destructive. Consequently the goat is usually only seen in large flocks on mountain pastures and rocky, uncultivated ground, where the flocks are taken out to feed by the children.
On the high alps, in Greece, on the Apennines, and in Palestine the goat is a valuable domestic animal. The milk, butter, and cheese, and also the flesh of the kids, are in great esteem. But wherever the land is enclosed, and high cultivation attempted, the goat is banished, and the more docile and controllable sheep takes its place. In Syria the goat is perhaps more docile and better understood as a dairy animal than elsewhere in the East. The flocks are driven into Damascus in the morning; and instead of a milk-cart calling, the flock itself goes round the city, and particular goats are milked before the doors of regular customers.
The European goat is a very useful animal for providing milk to poor families in large towns. The sheep, while preserving its hardy habits in some districts, adapts itself to richer food, and acquires the habits as well as the digestion of domestication. The goat remains, as in old days, the enemy of trees, inquisitive, omnivorous, pugnacious. It is unsuited for the settled life of the farm. Rich pasture makes it ill, and a good clay soil, on which cattle grow fat, kills it. But it is far from being disqualified for the service of some forms of modern civilization by the survival of primitive habits. Though it cannot live comfortably in the smiling pastures of the low country, it is perfectly willing to exchange the rocks of the mountain for a stable-yard in town. Its love for stony places is amply satisfied by a granite pavement, and it has been ascertained that goats fed in stalls and allowed to wander in paved courts and yards live longer and enjoy better health than those tethered even on light pastures. In parts of New York the city goats are said to flourish on the paste-daubed paper of the advertisements which they nibble from the bill-boards!