240 Goats 



close together on the head and of great length, more or less compressed 

 and angulated, and rising above the plane ot the forehead either in a 

 scimitar-like curve or a spiral ; those of females much smaller and placed 

 further apart at the base. 



Skull without gland-pits below the eyes ; broad across the sockets of 

 the latter, and narrowing somewhat suddenly below ; the planes of the 

 occiput and of the forehead meeting one another at an obtuse angle ; 

 occipital and parietal region much rounded ; profile ot face concave. 



Comparing the above definition with that ot the genus Ovis given 

 on p. 149, it will be found that the points ot difference of the goats 

 are the absence of glands in the hind-feet, the presence of a beard in the 

 males, the strong odour exhaled by the latter sex, and certain details in 

 regard to the conformation of the skull. The horns form no criterion, 

 since those of the bharal are very like those of the East Caucasian tur, 

 in which also the beard is but verv slightly developed. Had we only 

 the sheep of the caprovine group on the one hand and the more typical 

 goats on the other to deal with, there would be hesitation in admitting the 

 propriety of assigning the two groups to separate genera. But the arui, 

 the bharal, and the tur form such a connecting chain that the advisability 

 of the distinction appears to me doubtful. 



This was recognised as tar back as the year 181 i by the Russian 

 naturalist and traveller Pallas, who referred all these animals to his genus 

 JEgoceros^ although of course Capra ought to have been employed in the 

 same sense, as coming in the Linnean system before Ovis. Similarly 

 Bennett^ in 1835 wrote as follows : — "There are two principal difficulties 

 in the natural history of the sheep, each involving questions of considerable 

 importance, but neither of them admitting, in the present state of our 

 knowledge, of a perfectly satisfactory solution. The first relates to the 

 propriety of the generic distinction between the sheep and goats, which 



' The Gitrdcns and Mohigerie of the Zookgien/ Society Delineated^ \<>1. i. pp. 259 and 261. 



