The White Goat 237 



sheep was fully aware of what had befallen him. 

 Hunters can picture such an encounter, which 

 probably would be brief if grand. The gallant 

 old sheep would stand, aim, bound to the attack 

 and leap in the air, expecting to dash his forehead 

 and curling horns against the face and horns of 

 the goat. But the goat ah ! that's not the 

 goat's way. It would have happened so quickly 

 as not to be made out; but there the poor ram 

 would lie, ripped open. The goat does nothing 

 so picturesque and unpractical as jumping in the 

 air. He lowers his sullen head, one shrewd thrust 

 and jerk-back with his deadly sharp horns, and 

 the business is despatched. And the goat looks 

 it, too. His appearance suggests immediately 

 that you had better look out for him if you 

 happen to be a ram with beautiful useless horns 

 useless, that is, against any such apparatus as 

 the goat carries. One day I stood watching a 

 good specimen billy- Oreamnus. The nanny, less 

 conspicuous, lay in the shade on some flat ground, 

 asleep. But the billy sat hunched on the peak of 

 a built-up pyramid of rocks. It was in the Zoo- 

 logical Gardens at Philadelphia where this pair, 

 taken into captivity in 1901, have grown and 

 thrived, but have not bred. The billy shows his for- 



