GOAT (a

See also:

• COMMON

common Teut. word; O. Eng. gat, Goth. gaits, Mod. Ger. Geiss, cognate with

See also:

• LAT

Lat. haedus, a kid)  , properly the name of the well-known domesticated European ruminant (Capra hircus), which has for all time been regarded as the emblem of everything that is evil, in contradistinction to the sheep, which is the symbol of excellence and purity . Although the more typical goats are markedly distinct from sheep, there is, both as regards wild and domesticated forms, an almost complete gradation from goats to sheep, so that it is exceedingly difficult to define either group . The position of the genus Capra (to all the members of which, as well as some allied species, the name " goat " in its wider sense is applicable) in the family Bovidae is indicated in the article BOVIDAE, and some of the distinctions between goats and sheep are mentioned in the article SHEEP . Here then it will suffice to mention that goats are characterized by the strong and offensive odour of the males, which are furnished with a beard on the chin; while as a general rule glands are present between the middle toes of the fore feet only . Goats, in the wild state, are an exclusively old-world group, of which the more typical forms are confined to Europe and south-western and central Asia, although there are two outlying species in northern Africa The wild goat, or pasang, is represented in Europe in the Cyclades and Crete by rather small races . 1, 183o, written 16o8–161o) ; P . Baldaeus, in Churchill's Voyages, vol . 3 (London, 1732) ; J . Fryer, A New Account of East India and Persia (London, 1698) ; A. de Mandelslo, Voyages (London, 1669) ; Les Voyages de M. de Thevenot aux lades Orientales (Amster-dam, 1799), and A . Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies (London, 1774) . For Goa in the 2oth century see The Imperial Gazetteer of India . (K .

G .