6 The 'Book of the Goat. 



axis of the head ; in t'he goat it runs almost parallel with 

 it a character well shown in the present fossil. Whether 

 the Capra cegagrus or the Capra Ibex should be regarded 

 as the stock of the domesticated goat of Europe has long 

 been a question among naturalists ; the weighty argument 

 which may be drawn from the character of the wild species, 

 which was contemporary with the Bos primi genius and 

 Bos longifrons in England, is shown by the present fossil 

 to be iri favour of Capra ccgagnts." (Owen's " Brit. 

 Foss. Mam.," &c., p. 490.) That the Capra agagrus of 

 the mountains of Asia occasionally crossed with some allied 

 species, as with the C. falconeri of India, is not improb- 

 able, and the idea is held by M. Brandt and other 

 authorities. 



The goat appears to have been domesticated from very 

 early days, as is evidenced by the remains which have 

 lieen found ; though these are generally in a very fragmen- 

 tary condition. According to Professor Riitimeyer, the 

 ancient inhabitants of the lake-dwellings in Switzerland 

 seem to have used the goat rnore frequently than the sheep ; 

 the goat of these ancient lakemen, which apparently dif- 

 fered in no respect from the race now common in Switzer- 

 land, was probably brought thither by some people migrat- 

 ing northwards from the Mediterranean countries. The 

 late Professor Rolleston, who had opportunities for 

 examining the very rich collections of animal bones from 

 various lake-dwellings, found that " the goat is richly and 

 unambiguously represented in the stone-age lake-dwellings, 

 and more abundantly indeed than the sheep in the early 

 stone-age lake-dwellings of Moosseedorf." It seems, how- 

 ever, to have lost this numerical preponderance towards 

 the end of the stone period, and to have become compara- 

 tively scarce in the bronze age. M. Kinberg, Stockholm 

 (" Internal. Congres Anth.," p. 831), tells us that in 

 Sweden " La Chevre (Capra hire us) par ait avoir cte 



