1868 cover print: CASHMERE GOATS & their silky wool

Description

“Group of Cashmere
or Angora Goats.
”
1868
This is a single wood engraved sheet
published over 150 years ago
as the title page of the March, 1868, issue of the A
merican
A
griculturist
, a popular monthly farm journal. The overall page is 9 x 12 inches, with the illustration being 7 x 7.5 inches in size. It is in excellent and attractive condition, with small binding pinholes in its blank left border (see photo) and only a slight bit of age browning.
It features a fine woodcut illustration of Cashmere goats on a rocky terrain, stretching upward to feed upon some tree leaves. (A caption below refers to them as also being Angora goats, so perhaps those two breeds were thought to be the same at the time.)
Below the engraving is an article of 33 lines of text, which says in its entirety:
“
Our artist presents us a picturesque group of these silky-haired claimants for public favor, exhibiting at once their fleeces and their propensities. Rocks that goats will not climb, foliage that they will not eat, bark that they will not gnaw, are things hard to find. Still, these propensities to overstep bounds, and do what we would rather they would not, may all be controlled, and their silky fleeces made available to the comfort and pleasure of man. We have been much interested in examining samples of the fleece of different pure-blooded and grade animals of this breed, if so it may be called, as well as the animals themselves, and are convinced from the diversity of form in the animals, and of fineness of the wool or hair, that there is in the stock great capacity for improvement. These goats impress their characteristics with great certainty and power upon their offspring, when crossed with common goats. The fleece consists of the long, often very fine, silky, hair, and beneath it, very close, fine wool, which coats the animal in the winter season, and affords a most efficient protection from the cold. By careful breeding, doubtless either of these kinds of fleece may be increased in quantity. The fine Cashmere shawls are made from the soft, fine wool; and though experiments in introducing the fine-haired goats of Cashmere and Thibet into Southern India, to produce this fine fleece, have failed, yet the Cashmeres introduced into this country, and their descendants, are said not to deteriorate in this respect
.”
[gsp3317]
_gsrx_vers_1426 (GS 9.0.3 (1426))