2 THE GOAT. 



latter possessed of hollow horns, like those of the Ox, the 

 Sheep, and the Goat, enveloping permanent nuclei of bone 

 proceeding from the forehead. Of the many species of Deer, 

 only one, the Reindeer, an inhabitant of the northern glacial 

 region, has been subjected to true domesticity, although in- 

 dividuals of the other species may be readily tamed to sub- 

 mission and dependence. Of the Antelope tribes, all the 

 species remain in a state of liberty, apparently endowed with 

 instincts which cause them to shun the dangerous vicinage 

 of man. But the Antelopes, wild, timid, and indocile as they 

 seem, are most of them gentle and submissive when reared 

 up under human protection, and might, doubtless, like their 

 congeners, be reduced to domestication : and further, the 

 Antelopes approach by insensible gradations to the forms of 

 those animals which Nature has fashioned to subject them- 

 selves most readily to the physical force and moral influence 

 of our race. At one point they are connected with the mas- 

 sive forms of the Bovine group, and at another they pass 

 into the Goats so nearly, that the line which separates the 

 species scarcely forms a natural boundary. The chief dis- 

 tinction between them and the Goats is in the bony nuclei of 

 the horns, which, in the Antelopes, are hard and solid, in the 

 Goats cellular, and communicating with the frontal sinuses. 

 As the Antelopes pass into the Goats, so the latter pass into 

 the Sheep. The internal organization of both the families is 

 the same ; they bear their young for the same period, have a 

 similar sound of the voice, and they breed with one another, 

 giving birth to a progeny partaking of the characters of the 

 parents. Both are covered with a mixture of hair and wool ; 

 but in the Goats the true wool rarely predominates over the 

 hair, so as to form the essential covering of the body. The 

 horns of the Goat are more straight and upright than those 

 of the Sheep, though in some varieties of Goats the horns 

 are spirally twisted, and in some varieties of Sheep, as in 

 the short-tailed kinds of northern Europe, the horns are as 

 straight as in the Goat. The Goat has generally bristly 



