AFRICAN CAMP FIRES 



armed with long high-power telescopes. With 

 these fearsome and unwieldy instruments they 

 surveyed the country inch by inch from the advan- 

 tage of a kopje. When thus they discovered a nest, 

 they descended and appropriated the eggs. The 

 latter, hatched at home in an incubator, formed the 

 nucleus of a flock. 



Pass the raising of ostrich chicks to full size 

 through the difficulties of disease, wild beasts, and 

 sheer cussedness. Of the resultant thirty birds or so 

 of the season's catch but two or three will even 

 promise good production. These must be bred in 

 captivity with other likely specimens. Thus after 

 several years the industrious ostrich farmer may 

 become possessed of a few really prime birds. To 

 accumulate a proper flock of such in a new country is 

 a matter of a decade or so. Extra prime birds are 

 as well known, and as much in demand for breeding 

 as any blooded horse in a racing country. Your 

 true ostrich enthusiast, like the Hills, possesses 

 trunks full of feathers, not good commercially, but 

 intensely interesting for comparison and for the 

 purposes of prophecy. While I stayed with them 

 came a rumour of a very fine plucking a distant 

 neighbour had just finished from a likely two-year- 

 old. The Hills were manifestly uneasy until one 

 of them had ridden the long distance to compare 



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