1868.] 413 [Hayes. 



manent home and has preferred it unto this day. He shows that two 

 branches of the Turkish race, the Suldjeks and the Oglius, success- 

 ively installed themselves in Asia Minor in the eleventh and thir- 

 teenth centuries, taking possession of the precise region in which 

 Angora is included, and which their descendants still occupy. Im- 

 mediately previous to their immigration they had occupied the vast 

 plains of Khoi'assan and Bokara, and still more anciently, accord- 

 ing to the most celebrated orientalists and geographers, the country 

 on the southern borders of Siberia and the mountains of the Altai 

 chain. It appears thus to be not improbable that a race of animals, 

 originating in Central Asia, whose representative still exists in the 

 Capra Falconeri, should have been carried by the migi-ation of pas- 

 toral tribes to the region in which they are now found in the modified 

 form of the Angora goat. This hypothesis is supported by the state- 

 ment of the President dela Tour d'Aigues, probably derived fi-om the 

 Turkish shepherds who accompanied the flock introduced by him into 

 Europe in 1787, that "there is a constant tradition that the goats of 

 Angora did not originate in that country, but were derived from Cen- 

 tral Asia." * 



Although the origin of the Angora goat from Falconer's goat is not 

 demonstrated by proofs as positive as those which support the deriva- 

 tion of the common goat from Capra agragux^ tliey are not less posi- 

 tive than those which formerly led all naturalists to attribute the pater- 

 nity of the common goat to that species. The absolute knowledge of 

 the progenitor of the Angora goat is of less practical importance 

 than the demonstration of a specific dilFerence between the two races. 

 That the Angora goat constitutes a particular race, and is not due to 

 the same origin as the common goat, seems established by the follow- 

 ing considerations: — 



1. There is an essential difference in the horns of the two races, 

 those of the Angora race being twisted spirally, a configuration wholly 

 wanting in the common race, the form of the horns being recognized 

 by modern systematic writers as the basis of the classification of the 

 family Cavicornia, or ruminants with horns permanent, hollow and 

 enclosing a piece of the frontal bone. 



2. The mammillary organs are hemispherical, while they are 

 elongated in the common species. 



3. The very long wooly hair hanging in corkscrew ringlets, fine, 

 white and lustrous as silk, covering the short and harsh hair properly 

 so called, which lies upon the skin, is in striking contrast with the 

 short and coarser external hair of the common goat with its finer in- 

 terior hair or down. 



* Sacc, Essai sur les Chfevres. Bulletin supr. cit., T. iv., p. 6. 



