NEW INTERESTS. 161 



now sufficiently numerous to be valued at several millions 

 of dollars. While the raising of the angora breed is still 

 capable of wide expansion, it is to the milch goat and to 

 the common goat that attention is more especially directed. 

 A good goat gives daily four or five quarts of milk, which 

 contains a good percentage of butter fat and makes up into 

 excellent cheese. It is estimated that Germany owns about 

 3,000,000 of these animals, that they are worth $12,000,000, 

 and that they yield enough milk every year to pay for them- 

 selves three times over. Every traveler is familiar with these 

 sturdy little creatures, which as readily and regularly climb 

 into the attic, often two or three flights up, to get themselves 

 milked, as the cows in our own country come home from 

 the pasture for a similar purpose. Since they require next 

 to no care, and find feed for themselves where almost any 

 other useful animal would find it hard to live, they have 

 very aptly been called "the poor man's cow." 



In England the business of raising milch goats has been 

 entered upon as intelligently and as systematically as any 

 other branch of stock breeding. People of rank and in- 

 fluence have engaged in the raising of milch goats not merely 

 for pleasure and as a fad, but, first, as an advantage to their 

 own households, and then as a sound business proposition. 

 Among the many prominent people who are thus engaged is 

 the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Her goats are annually ex- 

 hibited at the fairs and compete for premiums. 



But while the dairy feature of goat raising undoubtedly 

 presents promising opportunities for profit, the raising of 

 goats for their skins is in many respects much more alluring. 

 If all the goats now kept in this country were killed for their 

 skins they would not furnish a product sufficient to supply 



