PERSIAN WILD GOAT 
tains of Spain, though the horns of the rams are more angulated, 
rough, and twisting. As with most game, the old bucks are 
solitary most of the year, and stay on the high, cold peaks, but 
in the late autumn they seek the company of the does, and then 
large flocks often gather. The does are likely to winter in the 
lower and more sheltered valleys, and the kids (two, as a rule, 
as elsewhere in this family) are born in April. All are so ex- 
tremely alert, and so agile in climbing and hiding, that, al- 
though constantly -hunted since prehistoric times, goats are 
numerous all over the Iberian peninsula. 
Between this and the ibexes comes the common wild goat 
of Persia, which occurs on all the highlands from Crete to the 
barren hills of Cutch, and is the original of domes- — geroar 
tic breeds. Its coat in winter is brownish gray, in Goat. 
summer more reddish, with the buttocks and under parts 
nearly white; while the older bucks have the forehead, chin, 
beard, throat, front of the 
legs, a stripe along the spine, 
the tail, and a band on the 
flanks dark brown. The 
horns of the old bucks 
measure forty to fifty inches 
along the curve, rise close 
together from the top of the 
skull, and sweep backward in 
an even curve, with the front 
edge forming a strong keel 
marked by irregular promi- RAM OF PERSIAN, OR BEZOAR, GOAT. 
nences; the horns of the female are much smaller and 
smoother. 
This goat, from whose stomach are taken the best bezoars 
(“pasan’’), formerly so highly valued in medicine, and which 
was the one familiar to the classical and biblical authors, and 
supplied much of the repulsive mythology with which its race 
259 
