178 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



considering their length, they could be much less 

 conveniently used, for such a purpose, in this position, 

 than if the bird stood up. If the scratching, how- 

 ever, has grown out of the sexual frenzy, we can, 

 then, well understand the characteristic posture of 

 the latter being continued. I suspect, myself, that 

 the breast of the bird still helps to make the de- 

 pression, as in courtship it must almost necessarily 

 do — for the ostrich rolls, on such occasions, in much 

 the same way as the peewit. 



These nesting habits of the ostrich ^ seem to me 

 to support my idea of the origin of nest-making. 

 How strange, if *' spasmodic " and *' excited " actions 

 have had nothing to do with it, that they should 

 yet help, here, to make the nest ! How strange that 

 the cock ostrich, only, should make the depression, 

 assuming that attitude in which he rolls when court- 

 ing — or, rather, desiring — the hen, if this has no con- 

 nection with the fact that it is he only (or he 

 pre-eminently) who, in the breeding time, acts in 

 this manner ! In most birds, probably — though this 

 has been taken too much for granted — those frenzied 

 movements arising out of the violence of sexual de- 

 sire, are more violent and frenzied in the male than 

 in the female. In this way we may see, upon my 

 theory, the reason why the cock bird so often helps 

 the hen in making the nest ; nor is it more difficult 

 to suppose that the hen, in most cases, may have 



^ There are two kinds of ostriches — the scientific, or professorial 

 kind, that behaves in a way peculiar to itself, because it \s" 2iratife 

 bird," and the common, vulgar kind, as known to people in South 

 Africa, who have observed its habits on the ostrich-farms. For 

 the first, see various authorities, and for the second, Mr. Cronwright 

 Schreiner, in the Zoologist^ as mentioned above. 



