“It remains to speak of the number of sheep in a flock.  Some make this more, some less, for there is no natural limit.  In Epirus almost all of us have a rule not to allow more than one hundred short wool sheep or fifty fine wool jacketed sheep to a shepherd.”

Of goats

III.  As Atticus stopped, Cossinius took him up.  “Come, my dear Faustulus,” he cried, “you have bleated long enough.  Take now from me, as from a late born Homeric Melanthius,[123] a small offering from my flock of goats, and at the same time learn a lesson in brevity.  He who wishes to form a flock of goats should consider in choosing them:  first of all that they are of an age capable of breeding, and that for some time to come, for a tiro is more useful for that purpose than a veteran.  As to conformation, see to it that they are strong and large, with a smooth body and thick coat:  but beware of the short haired goat, for there are both kinds.  The 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]