io GOATS IN CITIES 



the greatest difficulty in getting a supply of cow's milk 

 for themselves and their families, or for persons living 

 in towns who require fresh milk for children, the goat 

 is the ideal domestic animal. 



It seems probable that in the course of some four 

 thousand years we have reached a point in civilization 

 in which the goat, for ages discredited, finds its place 

 at last. There is nothing in the primitive history of 

 the breed to contradict this view ; wild goats are no 

 wilder than wild sheep. But what the old naturalists 

 quaintly called the ' moral ' differences between sheep 

 and goats, now known as differences of temperament 

 surviving under domestication, are inexplicable. Both 

 the wild goats and the wild sheep frequent by choice 

 exactly the same regions. That uniformly unattractive 

 and sterile belt of mountain ranges where trees and 

 continuous herbage cease to grow, and only tufts and 

 morsels of vegetation are found, wherever, in fact, 

 there is the maximum of rock and the minimum of 

 food, is the natural haunt of wild goats and wild sheep 

 alike. There are exceptions, such as the markhoor of 

 the Himalayas, which enters the forest belt ; but the 

 above holds good of both species when wild, whether 

 in Corsica, Algeria, Persia, the Taurus range, Cyprus, 

 or the Rocky Mountains. Yet the sheep, while pre- 

 serving its hardy habits when desired, as in the case 

 of all the ' heather sheep ' of Exmoor, Wales and 



