Let us, nevertheless, take a view of the reasons against it. The wild and chamois goats both subsist in a state of nature, and both are constantly distinct. The chamois sometimes comes of his own accord and joins the flock of our domestic kind, but the wild goat never associates with them, at least before he is tamed. The male wild goat and the common he-goat have very long beards and the chamois has none. The male and female chamois have very small horns: those of the male wild goat are so thick and so long, that they would scarcely be imagined to belong to an animal of his size. The chamois also appears to differ from the wild goat and the common he-goat, by the direction of his horns, which are inclined a little forwards in their lower parts, and bent backwards at the point in the form of a hook; but, as we have already remarked, in speaking of oxen and sheep, the horns of domestic animals vary prodigiously, as do also those of wild animals, according to the differences of climate. Our female goats have not their horns absolutely resembling those of the male. The horns of the male wild goat are not very different from those of our he-goat; and as the female wild goat approaches the domestic kind, and even the chamois, in size and smallness of the horns, may we not conclude, that the wild, the chamois, and the domestic goat, are, in fact, but one species, in which the nature of the females is invariably alike, while the males are subject to variations? In this point of view, which, perhaps, is not so distinct from Nature as might be imagined, the wild goat would be the male in the original race of goats, and the chamois the female. This is not imaginary, since we can prove by experience, that there are in Nature, animals where the females will equally serve the males of different species, and produce young from both. The sheep produces with the he-goat as well as with the ram, and always brings forth lambs of its own species; the ram, on the contrary, does not copulate with the she-goat. We may, therefore, look upon the sheep as a female common to two different males, and consequently, constitutes a species independent of the male. It may be the same in that of the wild goat; the female alone represents the primitive species, because her nature is constant; the males, on the contrary, vary, and there is a great appearance that the domestic she-goat, which may be considered as the same female as the chamois and the wild kind, would produce with these three different males, which alone make the variety in the species, and consequently do not alter the identity, although they appear to change the unity of it.