Angora Goat - Livres de poche

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: domestic sources, seventy per cent. of the raw material for a manufacture valued at over one hundred and twenty millions of dollars, we must regard the acquisition of a new animal producing food and material for clothing, as an epoch in the industrial history of the country. It is the peculiar province of a Society like this to aid the development of this new national resource by shedding the fullest light upon the specific and geographical source of this animal, upon its habits, food and diseases, the uses of its products, and, above all, upon the laws which govern its reproduction; in a word, to make upon this subject natural history applied. As my object is less to present original matter than to diffuse the best authenticated information, corrected by your criticism, or sanctioned by your approval, a work rendered necessary by the errors abounding in agricultural reports and publications, I shall avail myself of the memoirs of M. Brandt, M. TchihatchefF, M. Sace, and M. Boulicr, naturalists of high repute, and the very numerous notices scattered through the proceedings of the Imperial Society of Acclimatation. The description of this animal, given in 1855, by M. Brandt, director of the Museum at St. Petersburg, and distinguished among the zoologists of Europe, for his conscientious work and profound knowledge, is as follows: "The magnificent example of the Angora goat, which the Museum of the Imperial Academy owes to M. Tchihatcheff, produces at first sight the general impression of a domestic goat, when attention is not directed to its thick and silky fleece, to its flat ears turned downwards, and its inconsiderable size. But it is precisely these traits which impress upon this animal a distinct seal, which give it the character of a peculiar race, whose origin is perha...