she goat should have two
excrescences, like little teats, hanging under the muzzle: those which
have them are fecund:[124] the larger the udder the more milk and butter
fat she will yield. The qualities of a buck are that his coat should
be largely white: his crest and neck short and his gullet long. You
will have a better flock if you buy at one time goats which have been
accustomed to run together, rather than by putting together a lot of
goats picked up here and there.

"Concerning breeding, I refer to what Atticus has said about sheep,
with this difference: that while you select a breed of sheep which are
slow of foot, because they are of quieter disposition, all goats are
as excitable as they are agile. Of, this last characteristic Cato
records in his book _Origines_: 'In the mountains of Socrate and
Fiscellus there are wild goats which leap from rock to rock a distance
of more than sixty feet.' For as the sheep which we feed are sprung
from wild sheep, so the goats which we herd are sprung from wild
goats: and it is from them that the island of Caprasia, near the coast
of Italy, gets its name.

"As it is recognized that the best breed of goats is one which bears
two kids at a birth, breeding bucks are chosen from such a race
whenever possible. Some fanciers even take the trouble to import bucks
from the island of Melia, where are bred what are considered the
largest and most beautiful specimens of the race.

"I hold that the formula for buying sheep cannot altogether apply to
goats because no sane man ever guaranteed that goats are without
malady, for the fact is that they are forever in a fever. For this
reason the usual stipulation has had a few words cut out of it for use
in respect of goats, and, as Manilius gives it in his treatise on the
law of Sales, runs as follows: 'Do you guarantee that these goats are
well today; that they are able to drink, and that I will get good
title to them?'

"There is a wonderful fact concerning goats which has been stated
by certain ingenious shepherds and is even recorded in the book of
Archelaus, namely, that they do not breathe through their nostrils,
like other animals, but through their ears.[125]

"Upon Scrofa's four considerations which relate to the care of goats
I have this to say. The flock is better stabled in the winter if its
quarters look toward the Southeast, because goats are very sensitive
to cold. So also, as for most cattle, the goat stable should be pa