GO 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
of intelligence that is as eloquent to me as the richest 
flow of human speech. If I move aside, he will mount 
my back, plant his paws on my shoulders, and continue 
prancing up and down, and throwing his enormous weight 
upon me till I yield the point he seeks, and give him a 
choice morsel. What he will eat in this way is prodi¬ 
gious ; yet the fare he seeks when turned out on the 
common is the dry and sapless leaf, the thorny sprouts 
of the whin or the hawthorn, half-withered elm-leaves, 
and, indeed, anything that appears dry, tasteless, woody, 
and indigestible. It is a fact but little known, that goats 
never drink ; this, coupled with their love of dry, scrubby 
forage, enables them to crop fatness from bald granite, 
and completes their adaptableness to barren mountain, 
heights. 
If I am bitten with any of that enthusiasm which is 
popularly called “a fancy/' it is certainly a fancy for 
goats. I have kept goats of every known variety, from 
the sleepy and fertile Spaniard, to the bold and sprightly 
Welshman, or the real chamois of the Alps. After all, 
I prefer these picturesque Angoras; they are the goats 
for the artist—every attitude is graceful, every line, from 
the beautifully shaped head to the clean fetlocks and 
polished hoofs, is suggestive of sylvan solitudes and 
rocky heights. Of all the domestic creatures that asso¬ 
ciate with man in the conquest of the earth, the goat is 
certainly the most ancient and classical. The earliest 
records of civilisation mention goats and sheep as repre¬ 
sentatives of pastoral wealth, and the most cherished 
property of the simple nomad patriarch; whose flocks 
were his household gods, his daily and nightly care, and 
