The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

the Argali
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE GOAT. 296
; and in the opinion of PaUas, which has been very
»A generally adopted by zoologists, the goat is the same with the
iEgagrus, a gregarious quadruped, which occupies the loftiest
parts "of the mountains extending from the Caucasus to the
South of the Caspian Sea, and thence to the North of India*.
Indeed the history of these animals is so interwoven Avith the
liistory of man, that those naturaUsts have not reasoned quite
correctly, who have thought it necessary to refer the first origin
of either of them to any wild stock at all.
They assume, that
these quadrupeds first existed in an undomesticated state, that
is, entirely apart from man and independent of him ; that, as
he advanced in civiUzation, as his wants multiplied, and he became
more ingenious and active in inventing methods of sup-
plying them, the thought struck him, that he might obtain
from Wse wild beasts the materials of his food and clothing;
and that he therefore caught and confined some of them and
in the course of time rendered them by cultivation more and
more suitable to his purposes.
We have no reason to assume, that man and the two lesser
kinds of horned cattle were originally independent of one an-
other. So far as geology supplies any evidence, it is in favor
of the supposition, that these quadrupeds and man belong to
the same epoch. No properly fossil bones either of the sheep or
goat have yet been found, and we have no reason to believe,
tliat these an'imals were produced until the creation of man.
But, as we must suppose, that man was created perfect and
full-grown, and with those means of subsistence around him,
which his nature and constitution require, there is no reason
why the sheep and the goat may not have been created in such
a stale as to be adapted immediately both for clothing and for
food, or why it should be considered more probable that they
were at first entirely wild. They may have been produced
originally in the same abode, which was occupied by that va-
ne ty of the human race, to whose habits and mode of life the
use of them has always been so essential ; and, if we assume,
» Pallas, Spicilegia Zoologica, Fasciculus xi. pp. 43, 44. See also Bell's His-
tory of British Quadrupeds, London, 1837, p. 433.