ANCESTRY OF THE GOAT 



Modern Breeds All Descendants of a Single Species — Great Success Attained in 

 Breeding This Species in Two Distinct Directions, for Milk and Hair 



OF ALL important domesticated 

 animals, the goat is distin- 

 guished by the simplicity of his 

 ancestry. The modern horse, 

 or ox, or dog, or sheep, is the product of 

 the combination of a number of distinct 

 species, but the European goat can trace 

 his pedigree directly back to a single 

 form. 



It is. then, a matter of particular 

 interest to breeders, to see what wide 

 variations have been produced within 

 the limits of one species, under domesti- 

 cation. 



Geologically speaking, both the goats 

 and their near relatives the sheep, were 

 late in appearing on the earth. There 

 must be a form somewhat intermediate 

 between sheep, goats and antilopes, 

 which we do not now know, but the 

 first goat fossils, according to R. 

 Lydekker, are of species allied to those 

 now living in the Himalayas, and are 

 found in Pliocene or late Tertiary 

 deposits in the Pan jab and the Siwalik 

 hills of India. In the succeeding or 

 Pleistocene epoch, remains of an ibex, 

 one of the best-known wild goats, are 

 found in the plains of Central Europe. 



The distinction between sheep and 

 goats was thus made at a comparatively 

 late time in the history of the earth: 

 even now it is not a broad one, for 

 although the typical domesticated goat 

 is distinguished without difficulty from 

 the typical domesticated sheep, there 

 are wild forms which stand almost 

 half way between the two. The blend- 

 ing of the two species has always been 

 the despair of zoologists, who sought 

 for some well-marked characters to 

 distinguish them. The great French 

 naturahst, vSanson, after discarding one 

 by one all the characters which he 

 studied, finally reached the desperate 



conclusion that the tail was the only 

 feature by which a goat could be told 

 from a sheep, that member, as every 

 one knows, being short and erect in the 

 goats, moderately long and carried in 

 the normal position by sheep. 



A GENETIC TEST 



Proposals to lump the sheep and goats 

 as a single genus have been frequently 

 put forward, but always rejected by the 

 body of zoologists, largely, it may be 

 believed, on the ground of convenience. 

 To a genetist, the question would depend 

 partly on whether the two forms breed 

 together and result in fertile offspring. 

 This is one of the moot points of animal 

 husbandry — a somewhat astonishing 

 fact, considering how many opportuni- 

 ties there should be for getting informa- 

 tion. 



On the one hand, there are those who 

 claim that a real hybrid between the 

 two forms is unknown; on the other 

 we have stories of districts in Russia 

 and Chile (or other parts of South 

 America) where it is alleged that a 

 hybrid form makes up the bulk of the 

 flocks. Examinations of some of these 

 flocks by zootechnists have led to 

 conflicting opinions as to whether they 

 were really hybrids or not. 



In the American Breeders' Magazine 

 for 1913 (Vol. IV, No. 1, p. 69), W. J. 

 Spillman, of the U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture, described and figured an 

 animal raised by E. Arnaud. of Monet, 

 Mo., which he believed to be a true 

 sheep-goat hybrid; it was one of a pair, 

 and its twin was distinctly an ordinary 

 sheep. Similar cases have often been 

 reported, but even if they are accepted, 

 they must be regarded as isolated, and 

 it seems fair to say that interbreeding 

 of the sheep and goat is at least very 

 rare; whereas the different species of 



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