Ronnie Herring, age 13, of Tulsa, Okla for s question:

What does a chamois skin come from'?

As we all knows ‑a good way to earn fifty cents is to wash and polish the family car. Naturally, we finish off the job with a soft chamois cloth ‑pronounced shammy. There was a time when the softest polishing rags were made from real chamois skin. But this frisky animal is too rare and too hard to catch to supply all our polishing needs. So we treat and soften sheep and goat skins to make our buffing rags. Your job on the car will look just as good, even if your shammy did not come from a real chamois.,

Even in his native Alps, the chamois is considered a rare and valuable catch. A hunter good enough to bring him down wears a tassel of chamois hairs in his hat. Such a trophy proves a hunter to be tops. For the chamois is one of the tip‑top mountaineers in the world. His family is Bovidae which makes him kin to the sheep, the goat the antelope and all the cattle.

But what a difference from the stodgy cattle, the gentle sheep and even the frisky goat. Mr. Chamois belongs to a special branch of the family that took to aerial acrobatics above the timberline of tall mountains, He is the Old World cousin of our fascinating Rocky Mountain goat. These cousins are goat‑antelopes, neither goat nor antelope but a bit like both.

The chamois lives at the very top of Europe and in certain tall peaks of Asia Minor. He is best known in the Alps, but close relatives prance among the peaks of the Apennines and the Carpathians. He is perfectly at home among steep crags above the timberline where no human mountaineers could ever go. He needs no trail or foot path for he can leap from crag to crag. A twenty foot jump across a yawning chasm is nothing special to him. What's more, he can land all four feet on a space as big as a saucer. The sight of a hunter sends him prancing away, his herd scatters in all directions. No wonder a tuft of his hair is such a prize.

In appearance, the agile chamois looks like a slender goat. Mr. Chamois stands about thirty‑two inches at shoulder level and weighs around sixty‑five pounds. Chamois is smaller and about twenty pounds lighter than her husband. They change their coats with the seasons, In summer they are blonds and stay  are blonds and stay way up among the snow. In winter they become dark brunettes and come a little way down the slopes. Like all bovines they are cud chewers. They forage for mosses, lichens and small, tundra plants„

Both Mr. and Mrs. Chamois wear crowns. There are a pair of alert, slender ears standing straight up from the forehead. There is also a pair of sturdy horns which go straight up between the ears and hook backwards towards the tips, Most important are the feet, It is the feet that make all the chamois acrobatics possible, They are small and dainty and, of course hoofed but the hooves are very different from those of their cousins who stay on the grounds. They are fitted with cup shaped hollows; this gives the sprightly chamois gripping power as he prances over the rocky ground. It also helps him stick onto a small space. He loves to stand on the tip‑top of a peak with all four feet holding onto a ledge no bigger than a man's hand.