MOUNTAIN FAUNAS 83 



the snow. In the male the horns are large and massive, 

 while the female has smaller ajid thinner structures. 

 Like aU their allies, the animals are very wary and 

 agile. 



The goats are mostly distinguished from the sheep 

 by the presence of a beard on the chin, and by the 

 strong odour of the males. They also are mountain 

 animals, their distribution showing a remarkable 

 analogy to that of the sheep, except that there is no 

 true American goat. Some ten species of wUd goat 

 occur in the Old World, and of these, two species, the 

 ibex of Abyssinia and the Arabian wild goat, which 

 extends into Upper Egypt, enter Africa. The remainder 

 occur in the mountain regions of Europe or of Central 

 Asia. In Europe there is a curious tendency for the 

 (isolated) mountain chains to have peculiar species of 

 goats. Thus there is a Spanish wild goat, sometimes 

 called an ibex ; the Alpine ibex, now exterminated as 

 a wild animal, is peculiar to that chain, and no less 

 than three species of wild goats inhabit the Caucasus. 

 Of the Asiatic species the most attractive is the markhor 

 {Ca'pra falconeri) of the Himalayas, with long spirally 

 twisted horns in the male, and fringes of hair ou the 

 chest and shoulders in addition to the beard. Closely 

 related to the goats are a series of smaller genera, such 

 as Hemitragus, including the tahr of the Himalayas, 

 and another species found in the Nilgiri HUls of Southern 

 India, there being thus a curious separation between the 

 range of the two species. The gorals (Cemas) and 

 serows (Nemorhoedus) are Himalayan and Tibetan 

 forms, which seem to connect the goats with the 

 antelopes, while the takin of Eastern Tibet is a large 

 form with curiously shaped horns. The interest of 

 these genera is merely that they emphasize what has 



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