52 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Instance of a Coal In- MIL' nourished by a goat. " 



animal might suck with greater convenience. 

 The foal followed its nurse to pasture, as if she 

 had been its parent, and was attended with the 

 greatest care by the goat, which always called it 

 back by her bleatings when it wandered to any 

 distance. 



In the mountainous parts of Ireland, and the 

 Highlands of Scotland, where no other useful 

 nnimal could find subsistence, the goat gleans a 

 sufficiency of food, and supplies the hardy na- 

 tives with many of the necessaries and conveni- 

 encies of life. " They lie," says Goldsmith, 

 " upon beds made of the skins of these animals 

 which are soft, clean, and wholesome ; they live 

 upon their milk, with oaten bread; and they 

 convert a part of it into butter, and some into 

 cheese. In this manner, even in the mildest 

 solitudes the poor find comforts of which the rich 

 do not think it worth their while to dispossess 

 them; in these mountainous retreats, where the 

 landscape presents only a scene of rocks, heaths, 

 and shoals, that speak the wretchedness of the 

 soil, these simple people have their feasts and 

 their pleasures ; their faithful flock of goats at- 

 tends them to these awful solitudes, and furnishes 

 them with all the necessaries of life ; while their 

 remote situation happily keeps them ignorant of 

 greater luxury." 



The milk of the goat is sweet, nutritious, and 

 medicinal; less apt to curdle upon the stomach 

 than that of the cow, and consequently preferable 



