6 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



ing twenty scattered huachos. The Gauchos unanimously affirm, and 

 there is no reason to doubt their statement, that the male bird alone 

 hatches the eggs, and for some time after accompanies the young. The 

 cock when on the nest lies very close ; I have myself almost ridden over 

 one. It is asserted that at such times they are occasionally fierce, and 

 even dangerous, and that they have been known to attack a man on 

 horseback, trying to kick and leap on him. My informer pointed out to 

 me an old man, whom he had seen much terrified by one chasing him. I 

 observe, in Burchell's travels in South Africa (Burchell's Travels, Vol. I, 

 p. 280), that he remarks, 'having killed a male ostrich, and the feathers 

 being dirty, it was said by the Hottentots to be a nest bird.' I under- 

 stand that the male emu, in the Zoological Gardens, takes care of the 

 nest; this habit therefore is common to the family. 



"The Gauchos unanimously affirm that several females lay in one nest. 

 I have been positively toki that four or five hen birds have been actually 

 watched and seen to go, in the middle of the day, one after the other, to 

 the same nest. I may add, also, that it is believed in Africa, that two or 

 more females lay in one nest. Although this habit at first appears very 

 strange, I think the cause may be explained in a simple manner. The 

 number of eggs in the nest v^aries from twenty to forty, and even to fifty ; 

 and according to Azara to seventy or eighty. Now although it is most 

 probable, from the number of eggs found in one district being so extra- 

 ordinarily great, in proportion to that of the parent birds, and likewise 

 from the state of the ovarium of the hen, that she may in the course of the 

 season lay a large number, yet the time required must be very long. 

 Azara states (Vol. IV, p. 173) that a female in a state of domestication 

 laid seventeen eggs, each at the interval of three days one from another. 

 If the hen were obliged to hatch her own eggs, before the last was laid, the 

 first probably would be addled ; but if each laid a few eggs at successive 

 periods, in different nests, and several hens, as is stated to be the case, 

 combined together, then the eggs in one collection would be nearly of the 

 same age. If the number of eggs in one of these nests is, as I believe, 

 not greater on an average than the number laid by one female in a season, 

 then there must be as many nests as females, and each cock bird will have 

 its fair share of the labour of incubation ; and this during a period when the 

 females probably could not sit, on account of not having finished laying. 

 Lichtenstein, however ("Travels," Vol. II, p. 25), states that the hens 



