70- The 'Book of the Goat. 



some years back in the Field, from which I give the 

 following extract : 



" The first European record of the Mohair goat 

 dates from the year 1541, when Busbek, the then Dutch 

 Ambassador of Charles V. at Constantinople, managed to 

 secure a pair of these animals, and sent them as a curiosity 

 to his Imperial master, with a strong recommendation that 

 they should be introduced into Europe. Busbek explains 

 that he was informed they had been recently introduced 

 into Asia Minor from Armenia. All later inquiries 

 support this theory, for in districts where they have 

 succeeded best the graziers assert that they came from 

 the eastward. According to tradition they were first 

 kept as household pets, and they still retain in a high 

 degree the gentleness and tameness derived from this 

 early method of domestication. The beauty and silkiness 

 of their fleece attracted the admiration of the female 

 members of the household, who quickly appreciated its 

 value as a fibre for the private manufacture of articles of 

 adornment in female attife, each family at that period 

 keeping from five to ten goats for their especial use. All 

 the extra fleeces not required for the purpose mentioned 

 were used for stuffing beds. In this way this delicate and 

 valuable animal was preserved before mohair came to have 

 a commercial value. At the present time it is extinct in 

 the regions where it derived its origin." 



Varieties. 



11 The most northerly point at which the Mohair goat 

 thrives is Kastamboul," says Mr. Gavin Gatheral,* "a 

 large and fertile province, but too near the moist winds 

 of the Black Sea to reach its highest development, the 



* British Vice-Consul at Angora, in a paper read before the 

 Royal Colonial Institute at Port Elizabeth. 



