RECREATIVE NATURAL HISTORY. 



UO 



France and England. That war had raged for come time with 

 varying mooes*, when in 1296 Edward oalled on John to help him 

 against France, and to surrender certain strongholds as necurity 

 - doing so. John refused both demands, and Edward 

 imm.-.iiat. ly marched with a strong army to the north, glad of 

 '.!. i retext he had long Bought of bringing Scotland under his 

 r.-ional jway by conquest. At Berwick and Dunbor the 

 1 1 oaten with dreadful slaughter, after which Stirling, 

 K.linl'iiivh. Knxburgh, and all the southern part of the king- 

 dom, foil into Edward s hands. Bruce and liia son, with many 

 more of the Scotch nobles, were in the English camp, the 

 unhappy country was divided against itself, and it fell with a 

 great fall. Everywhere submission was made to the conqueror, 

 iro-heorted Baliol resigned his crown to Edward, who 

 returned to the south undisputed lord of the whole of Great 

 Britain. Italiol was imprisoned and afterwards died in banish- 

 ment, and Earl Waronno was appointed viceroy or lieutenant of 

 Scotland. 



For eighteen months things went on drearily in Scotland ; 

 the people lacked leaders ; those who should have led them were 

 afraid, incapable, or actually on the enemy's side ; the iron 

 heel of English dominion pressed heavily on the land, and 

 entered into its soul. But there was a secret determination to 

 make use of the first opportunity for throwing off the oppressor's 

 yoke. Men bided their time, nursing up their wrath against 

 the day of slaughter, waiting as patiently as they might for 

 thoir natural leaders to come to their aid. At the end of 

 eighteen months the opportunity came. King Edward was 

 absent with his army in Flanders, and Earl Waronne was 

 obliged by ill-health to leave Scotland. The strong men were 

 away, and the tyrannical conduct of the under rulers, especially 

 that of Cressingham and Ormesby, served to irtitate the Scots 

 into taking advantage of the circumstance. 



In the mountains and forests there had lived ever since the 

 English came a number of so-called outlaws men of inde- 

 pendent spirit, trained to rough life, and imbued with the 

 freedom of the air they breathed men who never would acknow- 

 ledge the English rule. Chief of them was William Wallace, a 

 man of whom probably his friends have said too much, as his 

 enemies undoubtedly have said more thp.n enough ; a rough 

 soldier, in whose breast the unrefined spirit of liberty had a 

 home, and who acted both according to his roughness and 

 according to his love of liberty. This man put himself at the 

 head of the malcontents, and issuing from his cover, raised the 

 -taixlard of revolt against the foreign king. Hundreds and 

 thousands flocked to the rallying post, and in a few days after 

 he hail declared himself Wallace was at the head of an army 

 respectable for its numbers, and for the thoroughly good stuff 

 of which it was composed. 



RECREATIVE NATURAL HISTORY. 



THE OSTRICH. 



THE ostrich feather which adorns a lady's hat is a thing of 

 beauty, and, moreover, of interest, for the mind naturally turns 

 to the bird from which it was plucked, and inquires, What is it 

 like ? where does it live ? and what are its habits ? 



On the arid wilds of South Africa the ostrich is often seen in 

 companies of thirty or forty, herding in a friendly manner with 

 zebras and quaggas, when, if in the least alarmed, they take to 

 flight with a speed which surpasses that of the fleetest horse. 

 Their legs are big and strong, and specially adapted for fast 

 running, whereas their wings, from long disuse, are not strong 

 enough to waft their enormous bodies into the air, and are only 

 used to get a good start when the bird begins to run. The 

 question has been asked, Why has not the ostrich acquired the 

 power of flight like most other birds '( A very little considera- 

 tion, however, shows that the ostrich is better as it is. Any 

 animal which expends a great amount of force must eat a great 

 amount of food. To take a common example : A navvy, who 

 has great weights to lift and large loads of earth to wheel 

 about, is obliged to eat more food than the clerk, who never 

 wields anything heavier than a pen. The food which one eats 

 plays an analogous part to the fuel which one burns under a 

 boiler to generate steam. The more fuel one burns, the more 

 i'oroe is generated ; and the more food an animal eats suoposing 

 it all to be digested the more power it has. Now an enormous 



| supply of food would be necouary to give to the ostrieh mflU 

 cient power to move its huge body through the air, and M in 

 the wild desert regions where it lirea nourishment is very soaree, 

 it would appear, after all, that ite fliffatleee condition U the beet 

 for it. After thinking over these matters, one might predict 

 that the framework, or skeleton, of the ostrich would be unlike 

 that of birds which readily fly through the air, and ** is Men 

 strikingly in a comparison of their breast-bones. From the 

 broad breast-bone of a flying bird there is a portion which 

 stands out like the keel of a boat, and it is named by -t-~mirt 

 tho carina, or keel. It is to this keel that the strong mneele* 

 which move the wings are mainly fixed. But in the ostrich, 

 where the wing-muscles are not much used, and never for lifting 

 the bird through the air, the keel is not wanted, and it to 

 absent. The breast-bone of an ostrich, therefore. Is more like 

 the rounded top of a skull than the bottom of a boat, and this 

 may have arisen from the ages of disuse to which the wing* 

 have been condemned. Birds which, like the ostrich, use tturir 

 legs to run instead of th<<ir wings to fly, and which are similar 

 in other respects, have been grouped together by naturalists 

 to form the order of Cursores, which is the Latin for ntnnart. 

 The order has also had other names given to it, expressive 

 of other peculiarities. This order, or tribe, includes several 

 families, but of these we shall speak presently. 



The ostrich is perhaps of more interest to us as being a victim 

 of fashion, having for years been hunted down nearly to exter- 

 mination for the sake of its feathers, just as the seal, beaver, 

 and other animals are being chased off the face of the earth for 

 their coats. A hunt of this sort is no child's play. Being ex- 

 ceedingly wary, the ostrich will not, in its wild state, permit of 

 the approach of any human being ; and, when once started, it 

 would be useless to try and run it down, except by the strata- 

 gem of chasing it backwards and forwards on a plain with fresh 

 horses at either end, while, when brought to bay, it is truly 

 dangerous, having been known to split the skull of a dog with 

 its powerful two-clawed foot, and break the thigh-bone of a 

 man. The feathers, however, are very valuable, and in times 

 of scarcity at the Cape, when competition has been keen, the 

 best feathers have been sold as high as 27 10s. to 30 10s. 

 per Ib. It will therefore be well understood that the dangers 

 we have spoken of, and others also, have been willingly in- 

 curred in supplying the trade. In 1862 more than 76,000 

 worth of feathers were imported into the United Kingdom alone. 

 Since then it would appear that enormous profits have been. 

 made by the commencemer.t of a system of ostrich farming. 

 The birds have been kept out grazing like sheep, and every six 

 months have been shorn of their feathers. From statement.- 

 made by South African farmers, the half-yearly plucking c . 

 male ostriches would appear to yield feathers of the value of 

 from .10 to .12 for each bird. Birds which have been brought 

 up on a farm of this kind are so very tame that they will even 

 allow one with whom they are familiar to go and examine their 

 feathers. 



Respecting the habits of the ostrich in the wild state, there 

 is among travellers much diversity of opinion, which naturally 

 arises from the great difficulty of observing the ways of a bird 

 so averse to being approached. Many of them are agreed, bow- 

 ever, on this point that it is a prudent and wary bird, showing 

 little of that stupidity which has been ascribed to it. Where 

 hunted for its plumage, it takes every precaution to bide it* 

 nest, nor ever fails to abandon it if there be any evidences of 

 intrusion. Several hens will lay their eggs in one nest, the nest 

 being simply a shallow cavity scraped out of the ground, and 

 bordered by the removed earth or sand. The eggs, each of 

 which is said to be equal in ite contents to twenty-four of the 

 domestic hen, are arranged in the nest side by side, and on end, 

 the instinct of the bird having evidently pointed this out as the 

 best disposition of them for successful hatching. The eggs are 

 cream-coloured. The male ostrich is said to undertake the 

 whole duty of incubation. For a long time the females were 

 supposed to take part in the sitting, but this ides, may have 

 arisen from the hens proceeding to the nest to lay their eggs. 

 The male is somewhat larger than the female, and has finer 

 plumes, with more strongly contrasted colours. 



The ostrich is so easily satisfied with regard to water that ho 

 is constantly found in the most arid parts of South Africa, in 

 regions deserted alike by antelope and beast of prey. Nor U he 

 difficult to suit so far as food is concerned, feeding for the moat 



