

ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 23 1 



been in the length of staple and fineness in fiber of the wool, 

 and probably in the accumulation of fat, for no wild sheep is 

 known that has the fat-secreting habit of the fat-tailed breeds ; 

 indeed, most of the wild species are extremely short-tailed. 



The goat. This near relative of the sheep has been domesti- 

 cated from the earliest times, and his wild relatives are yet 

 abundant in many parts of the world, particularly from the 

 Pyrenees of Spain eastward to the great central plateau of Asia. 

 The Angora, which is native to Asia Minor and is noted for its 

 beautiful fleece ; the Kashmir of Bokhara and Tibet, which is 

 the source of the famous cashmere shawls ; the Syrian goat of 

 southwestern Asia ; the Sudan goat of northern Africa ; and 

 the Eg^'ptian goat of Eg)^pt, from the lower Nile to its native 

 hills in Nubia, — these are the principal races of interest from 

 the standpoint of usefulness and domestication. 



The pig. As with the sheep so with the pig ; almost every 

 region of the earth has its native species, no less than a score 

 of which are well known and fully described by naturalists. 



The peccary is the wild pig of Central and South America, 

 though he is one of the farthest removed of the wild relatives 

 in having not the simple stomach of the true pig but a complex 

 digestive apparatus something like the ruminants. The common 

 pig certainly does not trace directly to the peccary, which, how- 

 ever, would have afforded material suitable for domestication 

 had it not been rendered unnecessary by the better forms 

 already in our possession. 



The great wild ancestor of our common pig exists in two 

 well-marked species, the l^Iuropean wild boar (Sus scrofd) and 

 the Indian wild boar (Sus cristatiis). * 



The European species originally ranged over all Europe, 

 northern Africa, and central and western Asia as far even as 

 Mesopotamia and Beluchistan. It is now extinct in most of its 

 former stamping grounds, but yet lingers in some of the forests 

 of Germany where the boar hunt is a favorite form of amuse- 



ent. The blood of this species has been freely employed in 



