COMMON GOAT. 
269 
in the year 1566, to have contained at that time 
such numbers of goats, that the Portuguese who 
inhabited it, used annually to export to Europe 
about 40,000 skins. The few' inhabitants of the 
island valued the flesh so little, that they cheer- 
fully supplied our voyager and his company with 
as many carcases as they could use, without ex- 
pecting any price. 
The goat, though less friendly, and less ser- 
viceable to mankind than the sheep, affords, how- 
ever, a variety of articles of no small utility to 
human life. 
The flesh of this animal is wholesome food. 
That of a spayed goat, six or seven years old, is 
remarkably sweet and fat. The haunches, salted 
and dried, make excellent hams. The dried blood 
of the he-goat is, with some persons, a specific 
for the pleurisy and inflammatory disorders. 
The milk is of the best kind ; much more 
agreeable than that of the sheep, and possessed of 
some valuable medicinal qualities. The cheese 
prepared from it is much esteemed in some places. 
The cream is scarce ever separated for butter. 
The milk and the whey are both eagerly drank, as 
powerful remedies in cases of consumption. In 
the summer months, people of consumptive habits, 
through Scotland and Ireland, resort in consider- 
able numbers to places where goat’s milk is ob- 
tained. 
The horns of the goat are materials of manu- 
facture, as well as those of the cow and the 
sheep. Even the disagreeable odour of the he- 
goat is thought to operate on the human frame as 
a cure for nervous and hysterical distempers, and 
as a good preventative against many others. 
Horses, it is imagined, find it very refreshing ; and 
ipany persons of skill in the management of horses,, 
