GOATS. 



2 39 



to flight. Mr. E. N. Buxton states that these goats are generally found among 

 thick scrub, and he considers that the incurving tips of their horns are thus 

 formed on purpose to admit of easy passage among bushes. The pairing-season 

 takes place in November, when the flocks of opposite sexes come together, and the 

 males engage in combats for the possession of the females. In December the sexes 

 again split up into separate flocks, the males from one to three years of age 

 consorting, however, with the females. The kids are born in April or the beginning 

 of May, from twenty to twenty-four weeks after the pairing-season, and in a few 

 hours after birth are able to follow their mothers over the roughest ground. While 

 the kids are young the mothers confine themselves to the southern slopes and 

 warmer parts of the mountains, and carefully avoid such situations as are exposed 

 to cold and cutting winds. These goats are hunted either by stalking or driving, 

 and in either case display the extreme wariness characteristic of the group. 



That the Spanish wild goat is allied to the Caucasian tur is quite evident. 

 The form and curvature of its horns, together with the presence of a keel on their 

 posterior border, is, however, suggestive of a transition from the type of horn 

 obtaining in the ibex to that found in the markhor, and it is thus easy to see how 

 all the varieties of horns found among the goats may have been derived from a 

 single common form. 



The Persian Wild Goat (Capra cegagrus). 



The Persian wild goat — the pasang (rock-footed) of the Persians — is a species 

 (i I' especial interest as being the chief ancestral stock from which the various breeds 

 of domestic goats are derived. This species is characterised by the long scimitar- 

 like horns of the males, which are much compressed, with the front edge forming a 

 sharp keel, marked by irregular prominences and notches, while the hinder edge is 

 rounded, and the outer side more convex than the inner. Generally the tips of the 

 horns are inclined inwards, although they are occasionally divergent. The horns of 

 the does are much smaller, with an even front edge. The male pasang has a small 

 beard on the chin ; and in the winter coat the hair on the neck and shoulders is 

 rather longer than elsewhere ; and at the same season in the colder portions of the 

 animals' habitat a coat of woolly under-fur is developed beneath the hair. In 

 winter the general colour of the upper-parts is brownish grey, tending in summer 

 to yellowish or rufous brown ; the under-parts and the inner sides of the buttocks 

 being whitish or white. In the older bucks, as in the central figure of our illustra- 

 tion on the following page, the general colour is, however, paler ; a stripe down the 

 back, the tail, the chin, throat, and beard, the front of the legs, with the exception 

 of the knees, and a stripe along the flanks are dark brown. There is also a certain 

 amount of white on the lower part of the legs. 



An adult male, measured by Captain Hutton, stood 37 inches at the withers. 

 ( uxjil horns of the pasang measure 40 inches along the curve ; but in one specimen 

 killed near Karachi, the length was upwards of 52i inches, with a basal girth 

 of 7 inches. 



The range of this species is extensive, and was formerly even 

 more so than it is at the present day. There is evidence that in 



