276 LOST AND VANISHING BIRDS 



extremely careful in visiting the nest not to betray 

 its whereabouts, and will even feign lameness 

 when their helpless brood is threatened by danger. 

 The large eggs are cream yellow. They are good 

 eating, and from their enormous size often form a 

 welcome addition to the traveller's larder — some- 

 times scanty enough — in these desert solitudes 

 and scrub-covered plains. It is not known that 

 the Ostrich rears more than one brood in the 

 season. The value and use of the plumes of the 

 Ostrich are doubtless known to every reader, and 

 the growing scarcity of wild birds has led to their 

 being kept in captivity and denuded of their 

 feathers at stated intervals. Ostrich-farming is a 

 growing and a profitable industry. This method 

 of obtaining plumes is certainly to be commended, 

 and may prolong the Ostrich's existence as a 

 species; hunters of the wild feathers may even- 

 tually not be able to compete remuneratively with 

 the farmers of them. 



Far away to the eastwards, in the steamy forests 

 of the Malay Archipelago and Australasia, we 

 enter the home of another type of these gigantic 

 flightless birds. These are the Cassowaries, form- 

 ing the family Casuariidae, of which some nine or 

 ten species have been described. They arc found 



