The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication · Charles Darwin
GOATS.
From the recent researches of M. Brandt, most naturalists now believe that all our goats are descended from the _Capra ægagrus_ of the mountains of Asia, possibly mingled with the allied Indian species _C. falconeri_ of India.[97] In Switzerland, during the neolithic period, the domestic goat was commoner than the sheep; and this very ancient race differed in no respect from that now common in Switzerland.[98] At the present time, the many races found in several parts of the world differ greatly from each other; nevertheless, as far as they have been tried,[99] they are all quite fertile when crossed. So numerous are the breeds, that Mr. G. Clark[100] has described eight distinct kinds imported into the one island of Mauritius. The ears of one kind were enormously developed, being, as measured by Mr. Clark, no less than 19 inches in length and 4-3/4 inches in breadth. As with cattle, the mammæ of those breeds which are regularly milked become greatly developed; and, as Mr. Clark remarks, “it is not rare to see their teats touching the ground.” The following cases are worth notice as presenting unusual points of variation.
According to Godron,[101] the mammæ differ greatly in shape in different breeds, being elongated in the common goat, hemispherical in the Angora race, and bilobed and divergent in the goats of Syria and Nubia. According to this same author, the males of certain breeds have lost their usual offensive odour. In one of the Indian breeds the males and females have horns of widely-different shapes;[102] and in some breeds the females are destitute of horns.[103] M. Ramu of Nancy informs me that many of the goats there bear on the upper part of the throat a pair of hairy appendages, 70 mm. in length and about 10 mm. in diameter, which in external appearance resemble those above described on the jaws of pigs. The presence of inter-digital pits or glands on all four feet has been thought to characterise the genus Ovis, and their absence to be characteristic of the genus Capra; but Mr. Hodgson has found that they exist in the front feet of the majority of Himalayan goats.[104] Mr. Hodgson measured the intestines in two goats of the Dúgú race, and he found that the proportional length of the great and small intestines differed considerably. In one of these goats the cæcum was thirteen inches, and in the other no less than thirty-six inches in length!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.