It is beyond doubt that these hardy creatures are exactly suited for living in large towns; an environment of bricks and mortar and paving-stones suits them. Their spirits rise in proportion to what we should deem the depressing nature of their surroundings. They love to be tethered in places where they find bushes to nibble. A deserted brick-field, with plenty of broken drain-tiles, rubbish-heaps, and weeds, pleases them still better. Almost any kind of food seems to suit them. Not even the pig has so varied a diet as the goat; it consumes and converts into milk not only great quantities of garden stuff which would otherwise be wasted, but also, thanks to its love for eating twigs and shoots, it enjoys the prunings and loppings of bushes and trees. In the Mont Dore district of France the goats are fed on oatmeal porridge. With this diet, and plenty of salt, the animals are scarcely ever ill, and never suffer from tuberculosis; they will often give ten times their own weight of milk in a year.

The Kashmir shawls are made of the finest goats' hair. Most of this very soft hair is obtained from the under-fur of goats kept in Tibet, and by the Kirghiz in Central Asia. Only a small quantity, averaging three ounces, is produced yearly by each animal. The wool is purchased by middlemen, and taken to Kashmir for manufacture.

In India the goat reaches perhaps the highest point of domestication. The flocks are in charge of herd-boys, but the animals are so docile that they are regarded with no hostility by the cultivators of corn and cereals. Tame goats are also kept throughout Africa. The valuable Angora breed, from which mohair is obtained, is now domesticated in South Africa and in Australia. In the former country it is a great commercial success. The animals were obtained with great difficulty, as the Turkish owners did not wish to sell their best-bred goats; but when once established at the Cape, it was found that they proved better producers of mohair than when in their native province of Angora. The clip from their descendants steadily improves.

We now pass to consider various species of wild goats, all of which present very interesting features for our study.

The Turs

In the Caucasus, both east and west, in the Pyrenees, and on the South Spanish sierras three fine wild goats, with some features not unlike the burhal sheep, are found. They are called turs by the Caucasian mountaineers. The species found in the East Caucasus differs from that of the west of the range, and both from that of Spain. The East Caucasian tur is a massive, heavy animal, all brown in color, except on the fronts of the legs, which are blackish, and with horns springing from each side of the skull like half-circles. The males are thirty-eight inches high at the shoulder. The short beard and tail are blackish, and there is no white on the coat. The West Caucasian tur is much lighter in color than that of the East Caucasus, and the horns point backward, more like those of the ibex, though set on the skull at a different angle. The Spanish tur has the belly and inner sides of the legs white, and a blackish line along the flank, dividing the white from the brown; also a blackish chest, and some gray on the flank.

In the Caucasus turs are found on the high crags above the snow-line in summer, whence they descend at night to feed on patches of upland grass; but the main home of the tur by day is above the snow-line. The Spanish species modifies its habits according to the ground on which it lives. Mr. E. N. Buxton found it in dense scrub, while on the Andalusian sierras it frequents bare peaks 10,000 feet high. In Spain tur are sometimes seen in flocks of from 100 to 150 each.

The Persian Wild Goat

The original of our domesticated goat is thought by some to be the pasang, or Persian wild goat. It is a fine animal, with large simitar-shaped horns, curving backward, flattened laterally, and with knobs on the front edge at irregular intervals. It is more slender in build than the tur, light brown in general color, marked with a black line along the nape and back, black tail, white belly, blackish shoulder-stripe, and a black line dividing the hinder part of the flank from the white belly. Formerly found in the islands of Southeastern Europe, it now inhabits parts of the Caucasus, the Armenian Highlands, Mount Ararat, and the Persian mountains as far east as Baluchistan. A smaller race is found in Sind. It lives in herds, sometimes of considerable size, and frequents not only the high ground, but the mountain forests and scrub, where such cover exists. The domesticated goat of Sweden is said to be certainly a descendant of this species.

The Ibex