Page:Natural History (1848).djvu/203

Rh difference to constitute them of distinct families, it is by no means easy to define such groups by precise characters. The immense assemblage of animals, principally from Africa, which have been thrown together under the common name of Ante- lopes, greatly increase the difficulty, for while they are connected together by slight and easy gradations, they seem to defy the attempt to link them by any common characters, however loose, which will exclude on the one hand the Ox, and on the other the Goat.

Waiving, then, the further consideration of the Antelopes, we may describe the Goat and Sheep as having permanent horns in both sexes, formed of hollow wrinkled, angular sheaths of corneous substance, supported by a core or process of bone, which is very porous and full of cavities communicating with the interior of the skull. The muzzle is comparatively narrow, without any naked space around the nostrils&#59; the tail is short&#59; there are no fissures beneath the eyes, nor tufts of hair upon the knees.

The Goats and Sheep are remarkably sure-footed&#59; at home upon the craggy pinnacles of lofty mountains, they leap from point to point with the utmost confidence, and find safety on projections and ledges barely sufficient for their hoofs to cover. The species, about whose distinctions there is much uncertainty, inhabit the highest and most inaccessible mountain chains, as the Alps, the Atlas, the Caucasus, and the Himalaya, in the Old World, and the Rocky Mountains in the New. In a state of domestication they have attended man, even from the very earliest times:—"Abel was a keeper of sheep."