I OSTRICH-FARMING IN SOUTH AFRICA : 



TN'hether justly or not, \ye cannot say ; at any rate, we 

 believe no one disputes that we were the first to make it 

 GUI' sole occu2:)ation, and to bring it before the world 

 as the extraordinarily lucrative and great industry it has 

 now become— an industry in which in the Cape Colony 

 alone there is not less than £8,000,000 of capital 

 employed, and with an export of feathers for last 

 year of 163,065 lbs. weight, valued at £883,632, being 

 equal to £5 8s. 4d. per lb., the great mass of which 

 was from tame birds. It seems almost unaccountable 

 that for over forty years after the landing of the British 

 settlers in the colony such a mine of wealth should have 

 lain at tlieir doors, within almost daily sight of them, as 

 at that time the wild bird was in abundance throughout 

 Albany, and right up to the Zambesi, and many of the 

 most adventurous of the settlers made an occupation of 

 hunting the birds and exporting the feathers, and con- 

 stantly came upon broods of young birds ; or even 

 later on, when the birds were destroyed and hunted into 

 more inland parts, and Grahamstown became the main 

 centre from which the traders fitted out and returned to 

 sell their feathers, and the inhabitants constantly saw 

 feathers sold for nearly their weight in gold, yet the 

 idea never struck them of domesticating the bird, and 

 reaping a half-3^early crop of feathers, instead of shooting 

 it for a single crop. 



