232 THE BOOK OF MIGRATORY BIRDS 



and practically rainless climate of Egypt renders this un- 

 necessary. They are of two sizes. One is the sort of 

 common room, in which young and unmarried male and 

 female ostriches to the number of from ten to twenty live 

 together. The other kind of enclosure is much smaller, 

 and is reserved for one male and one female bird when, at 

 f five years of age, they show signs of desiring to set up 

 house for themselves. In the sand floor of this house the 

 cock scrapes a shallow hole and invites the hen to lay in it 

 her eggs, which she does until they number about a dozen. 



Men husbands might learn a lesson from the fact that 

 the ostrich shares all its domestic duties with his wife 

 except that of laying eggs. Both birds sit in turn on the 

 eggs, relieving each other every three hours as punctually 

 as if they wore the best watches. It is amusing to see the 

 husband walking up and down waiting anxiously, or at 

 least conscientiously, for the time to come for him to take 

 his seat on what in Egypt must be almost as warm as a 

 domestic hearth. In South Africa incubators are used, 

 but not at the Egyptian ostrich farm. Here it is found 

 that the eggs are more productive when hatched by the 

 birds themselves. "Them big fowl" (as the Irish attendant 

 calls the ostriches) instinctively know whether or not an 

 egg is fertile. If it is not, they turn it out of their nest, 

 and no matter how often a man may replace it, he finds 

 that it is put outside the nest again. Here is another 

 illustration, for who knows better than Christ the produc- 

 tive members of His Church ? 



Those who often visit the ostrich farm near Cairo seem 

 to find the number of baby ostriches the same, and that 

 they are at similar stages of development each visit. Of 

 course, they are different birds, but only their caretakers 

 notice the difference in them. Baby ostriches are fluffy 

 little things covered with down and small feathers. When 

 the ostrich is six months old it has to give a harvest of 

 feathers, which are black and white in the case of the 

 male bird and grey in that of the female. Eight months 

 after this, and each successive eight months, another crop 



