(22 
CASHMERE GOAT. 
common goats, descended from the goat of Thi- 
bet, which pastures on the Himalaya. The cli- 
mate in Thibet is subject to sudden changes. 
There is little rain, but much snow, as the cold 
in winter is below the freezing point. Thibet is 
situated at the northern descent of the Himalaya 
mountains, and Cashmere at the southern ; hence 
the latter is a little warmer than Thibet. In 
Thibet, this goat is a domestic animal. It is not 
allowed a very luxuriant pasture. The favourite 
food of these animals is buds, aromatic plants, 
rue, and heath. The people of Thibet give their 
goats, at least once a-week, some salt, which has 
always proved a useful accompaniment to the 
customary food of these animals. If they are 
transferred from their cold, mountainous abode 
into a warmer country, the natural consequence 
follows, that the wool becomes inferior in quan- 
tity and fineness. It grows, also, very slowly in 
the warm part of the year, and more vigorously 
as the cold season approaches. The head of the 
Asiatic goat is large, the horns situated back- 
wards, and somewhat curved, the legs slender. 
The colder the region where the animal pastures, 
the heavier is its fleece. Proper food and care- 
ful tending increase the fineness of the wool. 
Yearlings, as in the case with the Merino sheep, 
afford the finest wool. A full-grown goat yields 
not more than eight ounces. The goats which 
pasture in the highest vales of Thibet have a 
bright ochre colour. In lower grounds, the col- 
our becomes of a yellowish-white, and, still far- 
ther downwards, entirely white. The highest 
mountains of the Himalaya, inhabitable by man, 
contain also a kind of goats with black wool, 
which, in India, and in the mountainous country 
of the goats, obtains the highest price, as a mate- 
rial for shawls. The goats of Thibet and Cash- 
mere have the fine curled wool close to the skin, 
just as the under-hair of our common goat lies 
below the coarse upper-hair. The wool is shorn 
in the spring, shortly before the warm season— 
the time when the animal, in its natural state, 
seeks thorns and hedges in order to free itself 
from the burden of its warm covering. All the 
hard and long hairs are picked out most care- 
fully. The wool, thus purified, is washed, first in 
a warm solution of potash, and afterwards in cold 
water, in which process felting must be carefully 
avoided. It is then bleached upon the grass,.and 
carded for spinning. The shawl-wool is three 
times dyed—before carding, after spinning, and 
in the shawl. The Asiatics avoid spinning the 
wool hard, in order that the shawl may be soft. 
They use a spindle, which consists of a ball of 
clay, with an iron wire attached. The finger and 
the thumb of the spinner are kept smooth by 
steatite powder. A large shawl, of the finest 
quality, requires five pounds of the wool; one of 
inferior quality, from three to four pounds. Main, 
in London, has invented a machine, which spins 
this wool, in a very simple way, finer than can 
be done by the best spindles of Thibet, and, at 
duced into France, and succeeds very well. 
CASSAVA. 
the same time, of a firmer thread. The flesh of 
the Cashmere goat tastes as well as that of the 
common one; and its milk is as rich, if it is well 
tended. Since 1820, this species has been intro- 
The 
enterprising baron Ternaux ordered 1,289 of these 
goats to be brought to France in 1820, under the 
care of the celebrated professor of Oriental lan- 
guages in Paris, Amadée Joubert. Joubert found 
these goats already spread from Cashmere to the 
Ural, over Bucharia, in Independent Tartary, 
purchased them in the deserts there, and trans- 
ported them over the Volga, along the coast to 
Theodosia, in the Crimea, where they were put 
on board vessels to be carried to France. On the 
voyage, which lasted a long time, a great num- 
ber died: there remained, however, more than 
400 healthy animals, which were sent from Tou- 
lon and Marseilles, partly to the Pyrenees of 
Roussillon, partly to the lime-hills of Provence, 
and to the pastures of Alsatia and Rambouillet. — 
CASINGS. Dryed cow’s dung used for fuel. 
CASSAVA. Two species of evergreen, tropi- 
cal, cultivated shrubs, of the janipha genus and 
spurge tribe. The bitter cassava, or best known 
and most extensively cultivated species, is now 
called. Janipha manihot, and was formerly called 
Jatropha manthot. 
was introduced thence to Britain in 1739. Its 
root is woody, and branches into numerous spin- 
dle-shaped, farinaceous tubers, about fourteen | 
inches in length and four or five inches in maxi- 
mum thickness, and very similar in appearance 
to parsnips; its stem is woody, knotted, and | 
about four feet high ; its leaves are smooth and 
palmated, and increase in breadth to within an 
inch and a half of the top, when they diminish | 
to an acute point; and its flowers have a brown 
colour, and appear in July and August. The 
juice of the tubers is an exceedingly virulent 
poison; it is often used in South America for en- | 
venoming arrows and for purposes of assassina- 
tion ; and it operates with such virulence as to 
destroy life in the course of five or six minutes ; 
yet it operates wholly on the nervous system, and | 
acquires all its poisonousness from the presence of 
a peculiar volatile oil, and can easily be rendered 
innocuous by the application of as much heat as 
will expel its volatile oil; and hence, it is used as 
a chief seasoning of a very favourite soup, which 
the Brazilians call cassarepo. The tubers, even in 
spite of the natural poisonousness of their juice, 
yield the well known tapioca of commerce, and 
afford a highly nutritious food to many thousands 
of the population of South America, and produce 
about six times as much farina from any given 
extent of ground than is usually produced in 
Britain by wheat. 
In a warm climate, upon dry rich soil, the bit- 
ter cassava plant is hardy in habit and very easy 
of culture. After clearing away the shrubs of a 
previous and exhausted plantation, cuttings or 
pieces of shoots are planted; in the course of 
==. —— 
It is a native of Brazil, and | 
