OSTRICHES. 107 



flinging out his clumsy legs, and twisting himself about 

 as he runs, till you almost expect to see him come to 

 pieces, or, at any rate, fling off a leg, as a lobster casts 

 a claw, or a frightened lizard parts from its tail. An 

 ostrich's joints seem to be all loose, like those of a lay- 

 figure wh^n not properly tightened up. He rapidly dis- 

 appears from view ; and the last you see of him he is, 

 as Mark Twain has it, " still running " — apparently 

 with no intention of stopping till he has reached the 

 very centre of Africa. But his mad scamper will most 

 probably end a few miles off, with a tumble into a 

 wire fence, and a broken leg. 



Sometimes, however, ostriches, when they take 

 fright, run so long and get so far away that their 

 owner never recovers them. One we heard of, to 

 whose tail a mischievous boy had tied a newspaper, 

 went off at railway speed, and no tidings of it were 



ever received. Once, when T was collectino- his 



birds for plucking, one of them was unaccountably 

 seized with a sudden panic, and bolted; and though 



T • mounted at once and rode after it, he neither 



saw nor heard of it aojain. 



On a large farm, when plucking is contemplated, 

 it is anything but an easy matter to collect the birds 

 — the gathering together of ours was generally a 

 work of three days. Men have to be sent out in all 

 directions to drive the birds up, by twos and threes, 

 from the far-off spots to which they have wandered ; 

 little troops are gradually brought together, and col- 

 lected, first in a large enclosure, then in a small one. 



