i6o VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



The flock is better housed if the stable faces the 

 winter sunrise, for goats are chilly ^ animals. It, like 

 most stables, should be paved with stone or bricks^ to 

 prevent the goat-house from being damp and muddy. 

 When they have to sleep out of doors, pens also 

 facing the same quarter of the heavens should be 

 strewn with brushwood, that they may not get 

 dirty. In the feeding of this kind of cattle much 

 the same attention must be given to them as to 



7 sheep, though they have their own peculiarities, as 

 they are happier in woodland glades than in mea- 

 dows. For they eagerly pluck their food from wild 

 shrubs, and on cultivated land nip off small 

 branches. For this reason goats get their name 

 (caprae) from carpere (to pluck). Hence, too, in the 

 text of an agreement for letting a farm, an excep- 

 tive clause is generally found forbidding the tenant 

 to graze on the farm the offspring of the she-goat. 

 For the she-goat's teeth are hostile to the growing 

 crops, and even the astronomers, while admitting 

 them to the sky, have shut them out from the circle 'l 

 of the twelve signs — the two kids and the she-goat ' 

 being not far from the bull.^ 



8 With regard to breeding: At the close of 



^ Alsiosum. Aristotle (H. A., ix, 3): ual 5'ai aiyfg ^vffpi- ! 

 yoTspai Tutv oiojv. 



' Testa (Vitruvius, ii, S) = lateres cocli, kiln-baked bricks. 



^ Sunt duo haedi . . . a tauro. These words Ursinus, Gesner, 

 and Schneider would expunge from the text, thinking them to 

 have been taken by a commentator from ii, i, 8. But Varro 

 frequently repeats himself. 



