786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and courage, too, lie is a better defender of the nest against mid- 

 night marauders. At nine in the morning, with unfailing punctu- 

 ality, the hen comes to relieve him and take up her position for the 

 day. At the end of the six weeks of sitting, both birds, faithfully 

 as the task has been shared between them, are in a very enfeebled 

 state, and miserably poor and thin." There was one hen which 

 refused to sit, and compelled her mate to do all the work ; but at 

 the next nesting the cock gave her a sound drubbing and brought 

 her to terms. Of another couple, the hen suffered an accident and 

 had to be killed. Her mate mourned her long and refused to 

 accept any other spouse ; and when the period of mourning was 

 over, and he took another mate, he allowed her to tyrannize over 

 him and keep him in abject fear. The hen ostrich lays every 

 other day ; and if, for each egg laid, one is taken from the nest, 

 she will continue laying till she has produced twenty or thirty. 

 If no eggs are taken away, she leaves off laying as soon as she has 

 from fifteen to twenty. Every morning and evening the nest, or 

 shallow indentation in. the ground, is left uncovered for a quar- 

 ter of an hour, to allow the eggs to cool. The sight of nests thus 

 apparently deserted has probably given rise to the erroneous idea 

 that the ostrich leaves her eggs to hatch in the sun. But, "stupid 

 though she is, she has more sense than to believe in the possibility 

 of the sun hatching her eggs ; she is indeed quite aware of the 

 fact that if allowed to blaze down on them with untempered heat, 

 even during the short time she is off the nest, it would be injuri- 

 ous to them ; and, therefore, on a hot morning, she does not leave 

 them without first placing on the top of each a good pinch of 

 sand." The charge made against the ostrich's intelligence that, 

 hiding its head in the sand, it imagines itself to be invisible, is 

 declared to be false ; but it does other things as foolish, and is 

 well described in Job's words, " Because God hath deprived her 

 of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding." 

 Ostriches are long-lived creatures, and, however old they may 

 become, they never show any signs of decrepitude, nor do their 

 feathers deteriorate. Their career is usually ended by some acci- 

 dent ; " and in about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the dis- 

 aster is, in one way or another, the result of the bird's stupidity. 

 There surely does not exist a creature past early infancy more 

 utterly incapable of taking care of itself than an ostrich ; yet he is 

 full of conceit, and resents the idea of being looked after by his 

 human friends ; and when, in spite of all their precautions for his 

 safety, he has succeeded in coming to grief, he quietly opposes 

 every attempt to cure his injuries, and at once makes up his mind 

 to die." The worst and most frequent accidents by which they suf- 

 fer are broken legs ; and their legs are exceedingly brittle. This ne- 

 cessitates the crippled bird being killed, for it admits of no remedy. 



