AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 163 



able investment; ostriches furnish an average annual revenue of some 

 thirty dollars a year each for their feather product; added to this must be 

 taken into account their natural increase; and added also, for the present 

 at least, v/hile the ostrich is a curiosity in America, the immense fund de- 

 rived from exhibiting the farms as "sights." Three hundred thousand 

 ostriches now yield their revenue to the English capitalists; and the time 

 is not far distant, perhaps in this generation, when the ostriches of Califor- 

 nia, Arizona, Florida and Texas will cover the southern lands of the United 

 States as they do the vast plains of Africa to-day. As regards the Afro- 

 American ostrich it may be safely asserted that the experiments so far 

 conducted with such enterprise and enthusiasm have resulted in unquali- 

 fied success and achieved the task of domiciling this giant of the African 

 desert, this fleet wanderer of the Soudan, among a civilized community for 

 the good of all parties concerned. ernest horsfall rvdall, Us Angeies. Cai. 



Phoebe at Home. 



1 have been interested in a Phoebe bird who built her nest under a bal- 

 cony of the boat house at Lake Quinsigamond, Worcester. After her nest 

 was completed and she was sitting on her eggs it was found necessary to 

 renew the rails and floor of the balcony. She remained on her nest all 

 the time the men were at work, not seeming to be disturbed by them or 

 by their pounding directly over her. She was seen on her nest after the 

 men were gone, for a few days, but from six o'clock of the afternoon of 

 May i8th she was not seen again for about a week. About that time a 

 swallow either started to use her nest or to build under the eaves on that 

 side of the house but the phoebe objected and spent two or three days 

 fighting with the intruder, till at last she won and the swallow left. The 

 phoebe went to work and built a new nest over the old one and the stale 

 eggs and laid a fresh set of eggs and hatched them. 



Miss Jane Woodward, Worcester 



Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, author of "Chapters on the Natural History of the 

 U. S." and for many years Associate Zoologist at the Smithsonian insti- 

 tute, writes us of his removal from Washington, to New York City. His 

 address now is 502 West 142 St., Hamilton Place, N. Y. City. We ex- 

 pectthe Doctor will favor our readers at an early date with some interest- 

 ing bird stories and illustrations. 



