GOATS. 
2 3 9 
to flight. Mr. E. N. Buxton states that these goats are generally found among 
thick scrub, and he considers that the incurving tips of their horns are thus 
formed on purpose to admit of easy passage among bushes. The pairing-season 
takes place in November, when the flocks of opposite sexes come together, and the 
males engage in combats for the possession of the females. In December the sexes 
again split up into separate flocks, the males from one to three years of age 
consorting, however, with the females. The kids are born in April or the beginning 
of May, from twenty to twenty-four weeks after the pairing-season, and in a few 
hours after birth are able to follow their mothers over the roughest ground. While 
the kids are young the mothers confine themselves to the southern slopes and 
warmer parts of the mountains, and carefully avoid such situations as are exposed 
to cold and cutting winds. These goats are hunted either by stalking or driving, 
and in either case display the extreme wariness characteristic of the group. 
That the Spanish wild goat is allied to the Caucasian tur is quite evident. 
The form and curvature of its horns, together with the presence of a keel on their 
posterior border, is, however, suggestive of a transition from the type of horn 
obtaining in the ibex to that found in the markhor, and it is thus easy to see how 
all the varieties of horns found among the goats may have been derived from a 
single common form. 
The Persian Wild Goat ( Capra cegagrus). 
The Persian wild goat—the pasang (rock-footed) of the Persians—is a species 
of especial interest as being the chief ancestral stock from which the various breeds 
of domestic goats are derived. This species is characterised by the long scimitar- 
like horns of the males, which are much compressed, with the front edge forming a 
sharp keel, marked by irregular prominences and notches, while the hinder edge is 
rounded, and the outer side more convex than the inner. Generally the tips of the 
horns are inclined inwards, although they are occasionally divergent. The horns of 
the does are much smaller, with an even front edge. The male pasang has a small 
beard on the chin; and in the winter coat the hair on the neck and shoulders is 
rather longer than elsewhere ; and at the same season in the colder portions of the 
animals’ habitat a coat of woolly under-fur is developed beneath the hair. In 
winter the general colour of the upper-parts is brownish grey, tending in summer 
to yellowish or rufous brown; the under-parts and the inner sides of the buttocks 
being whitish or white. In the older bucks, as in the central figure of our illustra¬ 
tion on the following page, the general colour is, however, paler; a stripe down the 
back, the tail, the chin, throat, and beard, the front of the legs, with the exception 
of the knees, and a stripe along the flanks are dark brown. There is also a certain 
amount of wdiite on the lower part of the legs. 
An adult male, measured by Captain Hutton, stood 37 inches at the withers. 
Good horns of the pasang measure 40 inches along the curve ; but in one specimen 
killed near Karachi, the length was upwards of 524 inches, with a basal girth 
of 7 inches. 
Distribution. 
The range of this species is extensive, and was formerly even 
more so than it is at the present day. There is evidence that in 
