FEATHERS AND HATS (rs 
very much, or else, that those who reported their wild 
life did not see correctly. 
‘“‘When the young Ostriches are hatched, they are about 
the size of a Plymouth Rock hen and are mottled and 
fuzzy. They grow very rapidly, so that at nine months 
old the bird will be nearly six feet tall, and after this the 
plumes are plucked at intervals of nine months; the 
feathers do not reach perfection, however, until the third 
year, and the birds do not reach maturity and mate until 
they are four years old, —and a fine male Ostrich of six 
or seven years of age is worth $1000 and will yield from 
$50 to $80 worth of feathers yearly. 
‘When a little over a year old, the mottled plumage that 
the young birds wear slowly changes, the female becomes 
a dusky gray, and the male glossy black, though they 
both grow long white wing-plumes. By this you may learn 
that all the gayly coloured plumes that you see are dyed, 
and even those that remain black or white go through 
many processes of cleansing and curling before they are 
sold in the shops.” 
“How do they get the feathers off?” asked Sarah 
Barnes; “do they wait until they moult or pull ’em like 
they do geese?— only that hurts some ’cause the geese 
squawk something dreadful.” 
“Tm glad that you asked that question,” said Gray 
Lady, “because it is one of the special points about 
Ostrich feathers that should be made known to every one. 
If they waited for the feathers to be shed, they would be 
worn and broken. You all know how very shabby the 
long tail-feathers of a rooster become before the summer 
moulting time. When Ostriches were first raised in con- 
