GOATS AT THE DAIRY SHOW.
THE number of milch-goats exhibited at the Dairy Show last week was larger by one-half than has been entered in former years. Many of the animals were highly bred and very handsome creatures, and the quantity and richness of their milk was greater, relatively to their size, even than that of the beet Jersey cows. The larger number shown were of the English, Nubian, and Toggenberg breeds. The finest and most domesticated of all, the goats of Syria, were not repre- sented ; but those from the herds of Lady Burdett-Coutts and Sir Humphrey de Trafford, President of the British Goat Association—some black and tan, others pale fawn colour, though with very " goaty " yellow eyes, and others of broken colour, but with fine glossy coats—were all well adapted for modern use in England. It is claimed that the goat is now qualified to be a " dairy animal " as much as the cow, that in Germany five goats are kept to every hundred of the human population, and that for poor people, who in rural districts have the greatest difficulty in getting a supply of cows' milk for themselves and their families, or for persona living in towns who require fresh milk for children, the goat is the ideal domestic animal.
It seems probable that in the course of some four thousand years we have reached a point in civilisation in which the goat, for ages discredited, finds its place at last. There is nothing in the primitive history of the breed to contradict this view ; wild goats are no wilder than wild sheep. But what the old naturalists quaintly called the "moral" differences between sheep and goats, now known as differences of temperament surviving under domesti- cation, are inexplicable. Both the wild goats and the wild sheep frequent by choice exactly the same regions. That uniformly unattractive and sterile belt of mountain ranges where trees and continuous herbage cease to grow and only tufts and morsels of vegetation are found, wherever, in fact, there is the maximum of rock and the minimum of food, is the natural haunt of wild goats and wild sheep alike. There are exceptions, such as the markhoor of the Himalayas, which enters the forest belt; but the above holds good of both species when wild, whether in Corsica, Algeria, Persia, the Taurus range, Cyprus, or the Rocky Mountains. Yet the sheep, while preserving its hardy habits when desired, as in the case of all the " heather sheep " of Exmoor, Wales, and Scotland, adapts itself to rich pasture and artificial feeding, and acquires the temperament as well as the digestion of domestication. The goats, as a rule, acquire neither ; and though among their various breeds there are exceptions, the English goat is not among them. It remains, just as in the days of old Greece, the enemy of trees, uncontained by fences or walls, inquisitive, pugnacious, restless, and omnivorous. It is so unsuited for the settled life of the English farm that rich pasture makes it ill, and a good clay soil, on which cattle grow fat, soon kills it. But the goat is far from being disqualified for the service of modern civilisation by these survivals of primitive habits. Though it cannot live comfortably in the smiling pastures of the low country, it is perfectly willing to exchange the rocks of the mountains for a stable-yard in town. Its love for stony places is amply satisfied by the granite pave- ment of a " mews," and it has been ascertained that goats fed in stalls, and allowed to wander in paved yards and courts, live longer and enjoy better health than those tethered even on light pastures with frequent changes of food. In parts of New York the city-kept goats are said to flourish on the paste- daubed paper of the advertisements which they nibble from the hoardings. It is beyond doubt that these hardy creatures are exactly suited for living in large towns. Bricks and mortar and paving-stones exhilarate them. Their spirits rise in proportion to what we should consider the depressing nature of their surroundings. They love to be tethered on a common, with scanty grass and a stock of furze.bushes to nibble. A deserted brickfield, with plenty of broken drain-tiles, rabbiali-bLaps, and weeds pleases them still better ; but the run of a Loudon stable and stable-yard gives them as much satisfaction as the " liberty " of a mountain-top. They give quantities of ex- cellent milk when kept in this way, are never sick or "sorry," and keep the horses interested and free from ennui by their constant visits to the stalls in search of food. Not even the pig has so varied a diet as the goat. It consumes and con- verts into milk not only great quantities of garden stuff which
would otherwise be wasted, but also, thanks to its love for eating twigs and shoots, it enjoys the prunings and loppings of bushes and trees, which would not be offered to other domestic animals, but which the goat looks upon as ex- quisite dainties. In old Greece it destroyed the vines, and in modern Greece it has killed off every young tree and bush on the hills till it has disforested the greater part of the Peloponnesus. But the same appetite can be satisfied from an English garden by giving to the goats all the hedge- trimmings, even those of the thorn fences of which cyclists complain so bitterly, and all the prunings of the apple, pear, and plum trees. Feeding goats in their stall or yard is as amusing as feeding the wild ibexes at the Zoo. They will stand on their hind-legs and beg, and when they do obtain the coveted morsel, eat it in a very dainty and well-bred manner. The list of their ordinary food when stall-fed includes potatoes, mangolds, turnips, cabbage- stumps, which they like particularly as being woody and tough, artichokes, beans, lettuces run to seed, and even dead leaves swept up in autumn, horse-chestnuts and acorns, especially after they have sprouted. Most weeds are eaten by goats, while ivy, and even the long-leaved water-hemlock, which will kill a cow, do not hurt them. When kept in towns they give large quantities of milk if fed on oats, hay, and bean-meal, and in the Mont d'Or district in France they are supplied with oatmeal porridge. With this varied range of diet and plenty of salt the goat is scarcely ever ill, never suffers from tuberculosis (so that young children are far safer from risk of contracting consumption when fed on goats' milk than on that of cows), and will often give of this milk ten times its own weight in a year. In our temperate climate, and on the growing quantity of small " parcels" of land spoilt by building and town areas, there is probably room for as many goats as the patrons of the British Goat Society could desire, even though the conditions are not the same as those in the mountainous countries of Europe, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, where they form an important part of the live- stock. That they would have been used here in very early times, had really good breeds been obtainable, as a " second string" to the dairy, seems evident from the old custom of milking ewes, practised as late as Camden's time on Canvey Island at the mouth of the Thames.
Mr. Lockwood Kipling considers that the goat is a thoroughly Mahommedan beast, and quotes a saying of Mahomet " There is no house possessing a goat but a blessing abideth therein ; and there is no house possessing three goats but the angels pass the night praying there." The British Goat Society are right in desiring that these ad- vantages shall not be limited to Moslems. But far the best breeds belong to the East, and it is strange that the Crusaders never brought back some of the really first-class goats of Palestine and Syria to this country. The difference between the best breeds of sheep and goats of Palestine is far less than might be supposed from the wording of the New Testament. Both have pendulous ears, both are often black in colour, and both follow the shepherd in place of being driven. The goats of Syria are the best of all. The hair is long, with good close ender-wool ; they are perfectly domesticated, and are excellent milkers. Instead of sending his milk round to customers in a can or cart, the Syrian dairyman leads his obedient flock of goats down the street, and after receiving an affirmative answer to the Syriac equivalent for the call of "Milk ho P" selects his goat, and milks it in the street before the customer's door. If the purchaser fancies milk from one animal more than another he has only to mention his pre- ference. The Cashmere shawls made of the finest goats' hair are not manufactured from that of Cashmere goats pastured, as is often believed, near the rose-gardens "where the nightin- gales sing by the calm Bendemeer." The precious wool is the under-fur of a breed kept in Thibet, and by the Khirgiz in Central Asia, from the slopes of the Alatan Mountains to the bend of the Ural north of the Caspian. Only a small quantity, averaging three ounces, of the precious wool is produced yearly by each goat, and the material is collected by middlemen, taken to Cashmere and sold in the bazaars, where it is purchased by the makers of the shawls. M. Janbert in 1819 imported some of these animals into France, and after crossing them with the Angora breed, obtained an average of thirty ounces instead of three ounces of equally fine wool. There is no doubt that the valuable "long-wool" goats could be bred in England as successfully as they are in the United States, Cape Colony, and Australia, were the commercial value of such an experiment assured. Recent experiments in acclimatising the vicuna, a small alpaca, in France have met with considerable success, and both the Cashmere and Angora goats were found to do well en the Swiss Alps, though as they gave no milk they were not popular with the farmer. Welcome as a new form of butcher's meat would be in England, the flesh of the goat,. or even of kids, has never been highly praised; but there is a. future for the goat as a minor dairy animal both in villages and towns.
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