68 SAVAGE SURVIVALS 



accuracy and to cling to the rocks without slip- 

 ping. But their education is now out of date. Play- 

 in young goats and sheep, like play in human 

 young, is a preparation for a life long left behind. 

 The play of the children of man is preparation for 

 a life of fighting, such as our savage ancestors led ; 

 and the play of the children of sheep and goats 

 is preparation for life among mountains and ene- 

 mies, such as their wild ancestors had. When 

 goats play, they go to school. They take lessons in 

 doing things that they are going to do later on in 

 actual life. But the life conditions of domesti- 

 cated goats are so different from those of their 

 wild ancestors that their schooling is out of date. 

 They will never use in actual life the lessons they 

 learn in their young years. Goat education, like 

 the education of many other animals, is behind the 

 times. 



10. A Child of the Sky. 



Goats and sheep are mountaineers. Their an- 

 cestors lived in the sky — in those high, peaked 

 places of the world to which they had been driven 

 by the hungry mouths of the lowlands. Domestic 

 goats are mostly lowlanders. And if you will 

 watch them, you will see them doing many things 

 they never would do in the world if they had not 

 been descended from inhabitants of the crags. The 

 tendency of the goat to climb up on lumber piles, 

 haystacks, and the roofs of low buildings is a pe- 

 culiarity which it brought with it down to the 



