4 
THE GOAT. 
HISTORY. 
down the breast. This creature is exceedingly wild, but inhabits a lower range of altitude than the Ibex. It is numerous in 
the higher parts of Asia Minor, and is believed by modern Naturalists to be the parent-stock of most of the domestic Goats. 
The Jemlah Goat, Capra Jemlahica of Colonel Hamilton Smith, is found in the most elevated parts of Central Asia. It is 
described by this eminent naturalist, from a skin transmitted to the British Museum, as being nearly of the size of the Ibex, and 
as having the horns nearly in contact at the base, of a pale ashy buff colour, nodose, very depressed, nine inches long, bending 
outwards, then turning suddenly so as to meet nearly over the neck. The bones of the head are dense and ponderous, the tail 
is very short, and there is no true beard. The colour of the hair, with the exception of some darkish streaks, is a dull light 
fawn, with locks of brown interspersed; and on the cheeks the hair is long and coarse, hanging like a lion’s mane on each side of 
the head. Nothing is known of the habits of this beautiful Goat. Its external characters show it to be specifically distinct from 
the Ibex of the Caucasus and Europe. 
The Jahral Goat, Capra Jahral of Hodgson, has been found in the mountains of Nepaul. It is described as having the head 
finely formed, full of expression, clad in short hairs, and without any vestige of beard. It is of a compact and robust make ; is 
found solitary or in flocks; is bold, capricious, wanton, pugnacious, and easily domesticated. It has the horns nine inches in 
length, smooth, and sharpened towards the points, and not turned inward or nodose, like those of the Jemlah. It is clothed with 
a coat of hair covering a fine and delicate wool, of one length and colour. Superficially the hair is brown, but internally it is 
blue, and the mane is for the most part of the same colour. The tongue, the palate, and the skin of the lips, are black, and the 
iris is of a deep reddish hazel.* 
Such are the wild of the Caprine family which naturalists have discriminated; but how far the list yet remains to be 
corrected, or extended, is unknown. The great mountains and elevated plains of Central Asia have as yet been imperfectly 
opened to European research, and the paths of the traveller are but as specks and lines in the countries to be explored. The 
boundless terraces and interior mountains of the African Continent, which may be regarded as the centre of a distinct order 
of living beings, may be said to be as yet untrodden by the foot of civilized man; and we know nothing of the treasures which 
their Fauna may contain, beyond the animals which approach the coasts, or are found in the few countries which are accessible. 
We may expect that, as future explorers advance into the wilder regions of the two continents, the natural history of the Caprine 
family will be illustrated and extended. But, as domesticated Goats are found in the possession of almost all the nations of the 
Old Continents, a natural inquiry, even in the present state of our knowledge, arises, as to the parent stock from which these 
animals, so generally diffused, have been derived. 
Ancient writers frequently speak of Wild Goats in a manner which leads us to conclude that they regarded them merely as 
the wild of the common race. But the notices of these writers are so vague and imperfect, that we do not know whether they 
referred to the Ibex, the JEgagrus, the Chamois Antelope, or any other species formerly inhabiting the same countries, but now 
driven away or destroyed. The opinion prevalent until a recent period was, that the Ibex was the parent stock of the common 
Goats; but since the JEgagrus has been found to be a distinct species, the general opinion of naturalists has been, that the latter rather 
than the Ibex, is the wild of the common Goat. But the iEgagrus does not approach nearer in habitudes and form to the common 
Goats than the Ibex, and although the latter inhabits a higher range of mountains, he seems to resign his natural liberty with 
equal readiness. Further, the Jemlah Goat, and, by analogy, we may believe, others of the genus, seem to be all endowed with 
the faculty of resigning their natural freedom and submitting to domestication. The most probable supposition therefore is, that 
the domesticated Goats have been derived not from one, but from different species. Not only do the Goats of different countries 
differ from one another, but there exist in the same country, under the same conditions of climate and food, races so divergent, that 
it is scarcely possible to believe that they have not been derived from stirpes distinct in the wild state. The Syrian Goat, so called, 
with a convex face and with udders in the female hanging to the ground, is as different from the Common Goats of the same 
country as the Jackal from the Wolf, and has retained, as we know from ancient notices, its distinctive characters for twenty 
centuries at least, that is, for nearly two thousand generations of the race. The little Goats of the coast of Guinea have been 
acclimated in America and the West India Islands for more than one hundred years, without making the least approach to those 
carried to the same countries from Europe. These and similar facts are irreconcilable with the supposition of a common descent, 
and cannot be accounted for by the effects of domestication. It is a probable supposition, therefore, that different species of Goats 
have given rise to different races now domesticated; and further, that different species of Goats have the property of procreating 
with one another, and that thus domesticated Goats may not only be descended from different natural roots, but produced by the 
* Hodgson— Proceedings of the Zoological Society. 
