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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



is, it is the best crop the bird will 

 produce. With care and good manage- 

 ment, however, little depreciation fol- 

 lows for a number of years. 



The ostrich plume owes its success as 

 an article of adornment throughout the 

 ages to its intrinsic grace and beauty 

 and, in these later times, when humane 

 principles are in the ascendency, to the 

 fact that no cruelty or destruction 

 whatever is involved in its production. 

 The clipping of the ripe plumes in- 

 volves no more to the bird than cut- 

 ting the hair or trimming the nails 

 does to man, or shearing the wool does 

 to sheep. Feathers, hairs, nails, and 

 wool are all epidermal structures, 

 devoid of nerves and blood vessels, and 

 no pain is connected with their removal 

 once growth is complete. The drawing 

 of the ripened quills is only performing 

 for the bird in advance and simul- 

 taneously what would take place more 

 slowly and irregularly in the natural 

 process of moulting. It is this know- 

 ledge which in all recent legislative en- 

 actments devoted to the prohibition of 

 trade in plumage has led to the exemp- 

 tion of ostrich plumage from any re- 

 pressive regulations. 



The wild ostrich breeds when four or 

 five years old, but the domesticated bird 

 from two to three years of age, or even 

 before two years, a remarkable instance 

 of the influence of high feeding in 

 hastening the physiological processes of 

 reproduction — combined with a certain 

 amount of unconscious selection on the 

 part of the farmer. The six-week pe- 

 riod of incubation is undertaken in the 

 nest by the cock at night and the hen 

 by day, or is carried out artificially in 

 the incubator. There is no support for 

 the myth that the eggs are left to be 

 hatched by the sun. 



In a dry climate and free from para- 

 sitic attacks the chicks are hardy, and 

 their rearing presents no difficulty. 

 But with each succeeding generation 

 the primitive wild nature of the bird 

 tends to assert itself and needs to be 



overcome, the tamoness attained by the 

 parents being in no measure trans- 

 mitted to the offspring. Left for a few 

 weeks to themselves, or even with the 

 parents, the natural wildness would 

 become established, and during their 

 subsequent career it would become 

 practically impossible to handle them. 

 To overcome this instinctive tendency 

 to wildness, chicks for their first year 

 or so have to be reared in close and con- 

 stant association with people on the 

 farm, when their nervous fear at the 

 presence and approach of human beings 

 remains in abeyance. Familiarity 

 breeding contempt, the natural fear of 

 nmn in the ostrich turns to aggression 

 at the breeding season ; and many a 

 prancing cock in the full glory of its 

 sexual vigor has stricken terror into the 

 lieart of the hapless person who has, 

 unwittingly and unarmed, intruded on 

 its territory, whether veld or camp ; and 

 many a violent kick has been received 

 from its flattened foot, or a cut from 

 its sharp powerful claw, resulting in 

 serious injury or even fatality. 



The domesticated ostrich also affords 

 much that is attractive to the student 

 of animal l^ehavior. Along with other 

 old-time African animals, such as the 

 giraffe, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, 

 it combines a maximum of bulk with a 

 minimum of brain. Like these and the 

 big Mesozoie saurians and early Ter- 

 tiary mammals, its nervous activities 

 are mainly reflex in character, not men- 

 tal. If intelligence be defined as the 

 ability to profit by experience, then the 

 ostrich is deplorably lacking in this 

 desirable quality. Even in such remote 

 times as those of the patriarch Job, 

 aspersions were cast at the mentality of 

 the bird. For do we not read : "God hath 

 deprived her of wisdom, neither hath 

 he imparted to her understanding." 



Its oft-quoted proverbial stupidity in 

 burying its head in the sand when pur- 

 sued, believing itself thereby hidden 

 from view, has however no foundation 

 in fact, unless the instinct of death- 



