ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 231 
been in the length of staple and fineness in fiber of the wool, 
and probably in the accumulation of fat, for no wild sheep is 
known that has the fat-secreting habit of the fat-tailed breeds ; 
indeed, most of the wild species are extremely short-tailed. 
The goat. This near relative of the sheep has been domesti- 
cated from the earliest times, and his wild relatives are yet 
abundant in many parts of the world, particularly from the 
Pyrenees of Spain eastward to the great central plateau of Asia. 
The Angora, which is native to Asia Minor and is noted for its 
beautiful fleece ; the Kashmir of Bokhara and Tibet, which is 
the source of the famous cashmere shawls; the Syrian goat of 
southwestern Asia; the Sudan goat of northern Africa; and 
the Egyptian goat of Egypt, from the lower Nile to its native 
hills in Nubia, — these are the principal races of interest from 
the standpoint of usefulness and domestication. 
The pig. As with the sheep so with the pig; almost every 
region of the earth has its native species, no less than a score 
of which are well known and fully described by naturalists. 
The peccary is the wild pig of Central and South America, 
though he is one of the farthest removed of the wild relatives 
in having not the simple stomach of the true pig but a complex 
digestive apparatus something like the ruminants. The common 
pig certainly does not trace directly to the peccary, which, how- 
ever, would have afforded material suitable for domestication 
had it not been rendered unnecessary by the better forms 
already in our possession. 
The great wild ancestor of our common pig exists in two 
well-marked species, the European wild boar (Ss scrofa) and 
the Indian wild boar (Sus cristatus). 
The European species originally ranged over all Europe, 
northern Africa, and central and western Asia as far even as 
Mesopotamia and Beluchistan. It is now extinct in most of its 
former stamping grounds, but yet lingers in some of the forests 
of Germany where the boar hunt is a favorite form of amuse- 
ment. The blood of this species has been freely employed in 
