4QO THE GNU. 



liarities that, like the buffalo and the ox, these animals are 

 strangely affected by the sight of scarlet ; " and it was one of 

 our amusements," he says, " when approaching them, to hoist a 

 red handkerchief on a pole, and to observe them caper about, 

 lashing their flanks with their long tails, and tearing up the 

 ground with their hoofs, as if they were violently excited, and 

 ready to rush down upon us ; and then all at once, when we 

 were about to fire upon them, to see them bound away, and 

 again go prancing round us at a safer distance. When wounded 

 they are reported to be sometimes rather dangerous to the 

 huntsman ; but though we shot several at different times, I 

 never witnessed any instance of this. Once a young one, 

 seemingly a week or two old, whose mother had been shot, 

 followed the huntsmen home, and I attempted to rear it on 

 cow's milk : in a few days it was quite as tame as a common 

 calf, and seemed to be thriving ; but it soon sickened and died. 

 I heard, however, of more than one instance in that part of the 

 colony, where the gnu thus caught young, had been reared with 

 the domestic cattle, and had become so tame as to go regularly 

 out to pasture with the herds, without exhibiting any inclination 

 to resume its natural freedom." 



Both of the authors above cited, agree in stating that the 

 flesh closely resembles that of the ox in appearance and taste. 



THE COMMON GOAT. (Capra hircus, Linn.) 



Zoologists are at variance in their opinions respecting the 

 original stock from whence the domestic goat has descended 5 

 but the general notion at the present time is, that it is derived 

 from the paseng (C. Mgagrus), which is the wild goat of Persia, 

 and of the Caucasian mountains. In some parts of Britain, more 

 especially in the most inaccessible parts of the Welsh rocks and 

 mountains, goats roam about without the slightest appearance 

 of ever having been domesticated or of having been derived from 

 a domestic stock. Pennant says, they were in his time suffered 



