As a flesh producer, particularly in sterile fields, sheep are more valuable than our horned cattle. They mature more rapidly, attaining their adult size and reproducing their kind in less than two years, so that in many parts of the world it is possible to obtain a larger quantity of flesh from poor pasturages with sheep than with any other of our domesticated animals. Their principal value, however, has been from the means they afforded whereby men in high latitudes have obtained warm clothing. Before the domestication of these creatures, peoples who had to endure the winter of high latitudes were forced to rely upon hides for covering--a form of clothing which is clumsy, uncleanly, and which the chase could not supply in any considerable quantity. Owing to its peculiar structure, the hair of the sheep makes the strongest and warmest covering, when rendered into cloth, which has ever been devised for the use of man. The value of this contribution is directly related to the conditions of climate. In the intertropical regions the sheep plays no part of importance. In high latitudes it is of the utmost value to man. No other of our domesticated creatures, except the camel, is so specially adapted to the needs which peculiarities of climate impose upon their possessors. [Illustration: Bedouin Goat-Herd--Palestine] The relations of the goat to mankind are in certain ways peculiar. The creature has long been subjugated, probably having come into the human family before the dawn of history. It has been almost as widely disseminated, among barbarian and civilized peoples alike, as the sheep. It readily cleaves to the household, and exhibits much more intelligence than the other members of our flocks and herds. It yields good milk, the flesh is edible, though in the old animals not savory, and the hair can be made to vary in a larger measure than any of our animals which are shorn. Yet this creature has never obtained the place in relation to man to which it seems entitled. Only here and there is it kept in considerable numbers or made the basis of extensive industries. The reason for this seems to be that these animals cannot readily be kept in flocks in the manner of sheep. They are only partly gregarious, and tend to stray from the owner's keeping. There seems reason also to believe that they cannot easily be made to vary in other characteristics except their hairy covering at the will of the breeder, and so varieties cannot be formed, as is the case with sheep, to suit each peculiarity of soil and climate. Thus in Europe, where it would be easy to name a score of distinct breeds of sheep, each peculiarly well suited to the conditions of the country where it had been developed, the goats are singularly alike. The original stock of these creatures appears to have been adapted to feeding on the scant herbage which develops in rocky and mountainous countries. They do not seem able to