350 Mr. H. Seebolim on the Birds of Natal ^c. 



keep themselves in good health. A large farmer told me 

 that on his farm of twelve thousand acres he did not like 

 his Ostriches to exceed 150 in number. Of course he had 

 sheep, oxen, and goats on the same ground. The Ostriches 

 were allowed to select their own site for the nest, which was 

 merely a hollow scraped in the sand, sometimes under the 

 shelter of a bush. The hen laid an egg every other day, 

 until about 20 were laid, when tlie cock bird placed the eggs 

 in order, and the pair began to sit. The cock took the 

 greater share of the labour, sitting sixteen hours every day, 

 or rather every night from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. The hen only 

 sat eight hours daily, from 8 to 4. Incubation lasts forty- 

 two days ; the cock bird turns every e^^ over daily, and it is 

 not an uncommon thing for all the eggs to hatch. There is, 

 however, great mortality amongst the young, which are liable 

 to a variety of diseases, from tape-worms, wire-worms, &c. 

 They do not become fully adult until the second year, many not 

 until the third. The cock generally pairs with the same hen 

 for several years in succession. Ostrich-farming on the 

 Natal veldt has proved a disastrous failure, probably for 

 want of some of the saline plants which grow on the Karroo. 



I am able to add one species to the list of Natal birds. 

 Vanellus inornatus is occasionally found near Durban. 

 Other birds which I hoped might prove new to the South- 

 African fauna turn out to be well-known species, but so 

 incorrectly described in both editions of Mr. Layard^s work 

 as to be unrecognizable. 



Numida verreauxi was described in 1870 from Natal 

 (Elliot, Ibis, 1870, p. 300). The secondaries are described 

 as ''black, with their inner webs spotted ; outer webs of the 

 first four, with the exception of a narrow line along the shaft, 

 white ; outer web of the rest unspotted, black, with lines of 

 bluish-green running their entire length, as though the spots 

 had become confluent.^^ (The italics are mine.) In the 

 ' Monograph of the Phasianidse,^ Mr. Elliot copies his original 

 descriptions of the birds in ' The Ibis,^ but by some unac- 

 countable blunder omits the words Avhich I have italicized. 

 This description, blunders and all, is copied in the 



