HISTORY. 3 



hairs on the breast, throat, and lower jaw, forming a distinct 

 beard ; but in some Goats these are wanting, and in some of 

 the ruder varieties of Sheep a beard appears, although it is 

 never so fully developed as in the male of Goats. The Goat 

 has a short tail, naked below, and carried more or less up- 

 right ; but this character likewise exists in certain races of 

 Sheep, as in those of the Zetland Islands, and generally in 

 the other races of the extreme north of Europe. The skin 

 of the Goat emits a peculiar musky odour, which, so far as 

 is known, does not exist in any race of Sheep ; yet there are 

 Goats in the countries of the East which are destitute of the 

 hircine odour. It is said, indeed, that the Sheep is distin- 

 guished from the Goat by the former possessing interdigital 

 glands ; but this character is not ascertained to be univer- 

 sal ; and it must, therefore, be admitted that all the charac- 

 ters of form employed to discriminate the two groups are 

 technical and trivial. It is chiefly by the general aspect and 

 habitudes of the species that we can separate them into ge- 

 nera. The Goat always approaches more in form and habits 

 to the Antelope tribes than the Sheep, and may be regarded 

 as the connecting link between them. While the Sheep, in 

 the state of domestication, is comparatively submissive and 

 timid, the Goat is restless, bold, and independent, even when 

 most enslaved. He is familiar and capricious, wanders at 

 will from his fellows of the flock, and seeks the craggy sum- 

 mits of the mountains where his native plants are to be found. 

 He boldly faces the enemies that assail him, and manifests a 

 greater confidence in his human protectors than the Sheep. 



From the earliest period of human societies, this wild and 

 erratic creature seems to have been subjected to the power 

 of man. We read of him as coeval with the Ox and the 

 Sheep in those fair regions of the East where the first dawn 

 of civilization appears through the mists of time. He en- 

 tered into the mythological systems of the first nations, and, 

 by the earlier observers of the heavens, was appointed to be a 

 sign in the Zodiac, with Aries and Taurus, his fellows in the 

 service of man ; although, in ancient Indian delineations of the 



