The Ostrich. 



THE ostrich is hunted in many picturesque ways, 

 some of which I shall attempt to describe ; but first 

 let us talk a moment about this giant flightless 

 bird that is not inaptly called the Giraffe of the Sahara. 

 It is but recently that in the English possessions along the 

 Guinea coast of Africa an ostrich was captured whose 

 height was over nine feet. Surely the captors of this 

 colossal plume-bearer may boast that they did not return 

 from a fruitless errand ! This phenomenal creature was 

 shipped to England, and presented to the King. 



The rough, bare feet, an enormous body which sways 

 like a ship, a long neck which lifts itself with the undu- 

 lations of a serpent, a hungry beak of reptilian form, 

 which snaps together with the click of a lock, a bald, flat 

 pate that defies the insolations of the desert wastes, eyes 

 that glisten with vivacity and a cunning that the ambus- 

 cade of the hunter can hardly deceive, and that are 

 untroubled by the sands and mirages of the desert, muscles 

 of steel, incredible agility, untiring energy, a stomach of 

 leather, and of all its attributes perhaps the most remark- 

 able its fantastic awkwardness of gait and bearing, with 

 its hesitant steps and automaton-like movements of its 

 joints, give it fhe appearance of some huge product of a 

 Nuremberg factory of toys. 



The ostrich does not fly, but with its feet, that are ready 

 at all times in self-defence, it measures untiringly the 

 leagues of the sanded plains. Its country is Africa, its 

 Eden the Sahara, its range immensity itself, its refuge the 

 horizon, its carpet the burning sand. Its victory is in 

 flight, in which it distances and wearies the AraS cavalier; 



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