KUMINATINO QUADRUPEDS 



149 



Common Qoat. 



The Goat ia a quadruped of the gregarious, or flock kind, 

 resembling the sheep in size ; its horns hollow, rather erect, and 

 bending a little backward. It is covered with hair, pale and dun 

 in its color, which in Eastern 

 countries is spun into cloth. It 

 was of cloth of this kind the 

 ancient coverings of the taber- 

 nacle were made. Goats are 

 noted for their long beard, which 

 gives them an appearance ex- 

 ceedingly venerable. They feed 

 on an immense variety of herbs ; 

 even poisonous herbs, which arc 

 destructive to others, are whole- 

 some to them. Their milk is considered healthy and medicinal. 

 They can run on sides of rocks, and with the greatest ease can 

 leap from one rock to another. They feed on the tops of hills and 

 among rugged rocks, in preference to valleys and plains of the 

 richest luxuriance. They find sufficient nourishment in heathy, 

 barren, and uncultivated ground, and carefully avoid moist places, 

 marshy meadows, and rich pastures. 



Goats go five months with young, and bring fljrth at the 

 beginning of the sixth month ; they suckle the young ones for 

 about a month or five weeks ; so that it may be reckoned about 

 six-and-twenty weeks from the time of their coupling till the time 

 that the young kid begins to eat. The goat generally produces 

 one kid, sometimes two; very rarely three, and never more than 

 four ; and she brings forth young, from a year or eighteen months, 

 to seven years. The knobs in the horns, and their teeth, ascer- 

 tain their age. The number of teeth is not always the same in 

 female goats ; but they have usually fewer than the male goat, 

 which has also the hair rougher, and the beard and the horns 

 longer. These animals, like oxen and sheep, have four stomachs, 

 and chew the cud. This species is more diffused than the sheep; 

 and go its, like ours, are found in several parts of the world, only 

 in Guinea and other warm countries they are smaller, but in Mus- 

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