LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



45 



but the people again stopping and looking for if 

 one passenger stops and looks up in a great Lon- 

 don thoroughfare, you have in a very few moments 

 an increasing crowd it flew back to another win- 

 dow ; and the second lot of gazers went their 

 way. The little bird then started again with its 

 straw towards one of the same pillars, and, cutting 

 round it, so as to avoid prying eyes as much as 

 possible, bore it to the capital of one of the pilas- 

 ters and disappeared, straw and all, into the snug 

 nook, made by a part of the projecting ornament, 

 which it had chosen as the place for making its 

 nest. The wary bird was not disposed to let an 

 inquisitive public know the way to its home. On 

 many other occasions I have observed these and 

 other birds remain, waiting about for a long time 

 with nest-materials and food in their bills when 

 they have perceived that I was watching them ; 

 but the moment I turned my head they were off 

 with their burden to the nest. This would not be 

 worth mentioning, were it not so difficult to find 

 persons who will use their eyes to some purpose. 



The careful preparation and anxious conceal- 

 ment manifested by the generality of birds in the 

 process of nidification can only be equalled by the 

 ardor of the consequent incubation. But there is 

 no rule without an exception, as we shall presently 

 see. 



In the Book of Job* we find mention made of 

 the ostrich : 



Which leaveth his egges in the earth and maketh 

 them hole in the dust, 



And forgetteth that the foote might scatter them, 

 or that the wilde beast might brake them. 



Hee sheweth himselfe cruell unto his yong ones 

 as they were not his, and is without feare, as if he 

 travailed in vaine. 



For God hath deprived him of Wisedome, and 

 hath given him no part of understanding. 



The following note is appended to v. 17 : 



They write that the ostrich covereth her egges 

 in the sand, and because the countrey is hote, and 

 the sun still keepeth them warme, they are hatched. 



The masculine gender is used in the text, and 

 we know that in a kindred genus, the emeu, or 

 New Holland cassowary ,| the eggs are hatched 

 by the male. But there can be no doubt that os- 

 triches incubate, though during the heat of the 

 day the parent birds may leave them to the high 

 temperature of the climate in order to avoid a de- 

 gree which might be fatal to the vitality of the 

 eggs. Captain Lyon states that all the Arabs agree 

 respecting the manner in which these birds sit on 

 their eggs. They are not, he says, left to be 

 hatched by the warmth of the sun, but the parent 

 bird forms a rough nest, in which she covers from 

 fourteen to eighteen eggs, and regularly sits on 

 them in the same manner as the common fowl does 

 on her chickens-; the male occasionally relieving 

 the female. It is during the breeding season, he 

 adds, that the greatest numbers are procured, the 

 Arabs shooting the old ones while on their nests. 



* Chap, xxxix. v. 17, etseq.; Barker's Bible, 1613. 

 t Dromaius Novcc Hollandice. 



By the way, Captain Lyon remarks, that at all the 

 three towns, Sockna, Hoon, and Wadan, it is the 

 custom to keep tame ostriches in a stable, and in 

 two years to take three cuttings of their feathers. 

 He imagined from what he saw of the skins of 

 ostriches brought for sale, that all the fine feathers 

 sent to Europe are from tame birds ; the wild 

 ones being generally so ragged and torn, that not 

 above half-a-dozen good perfect ones can be found. 

 The white feathers are what Captain Lyon alludes 

 to ; the black ones, being shorter and more flexi- 

 ble, are generally good. 



Various statements have been made as to the 

 number of eggs, and from eight to ten have been 

 mentioned as found together. The latter is the 

 number assigned by Le Vaillant to a single fe- 

 male. But he disturbed one from a nest contain- 

 ing thirty eggs, surrounded by thirteen others. 

 He watched this nest, and observed four females 

 in succession sit upon them during the day. 

 This appears to have been a sort of nest in co- 

 partnership, such as turkeys and other incubating 

 birds that make their nests upon the ground 

 will sometimes enter into.* The nest of the os- 

 trich appears to be nothing more than a pit of sand 

 some three feet in diameter, the sand being thrown 

 up so as to form a raised edge around it. 



From this modified and somewhat loose degree 

 of incubation we pass to the exception to the gen- 

 aral rule to which we have above alluded. 



The visitors to the garden of the Zoological 

 Society of London, in the Regent's Park, may see 

 a plain-looking, sombre bird, with a considerable 

 share of tail, of a size between a common fowl 

 and a curassow,f walking and picking about as if 

 it were looking for something it ought to find but 

 cannot. It is, at present, in the great aviary on 

 the south side, on the right after entering the gate 

 from the road. This is the brush turkey % of the 

 colonists of New Holland, the iveelah of the abo- 

 rigines of the Namoi. If any one should inform 

 an unitiated visitor that the bird before him never\ 

 sits upon its eggs, but plants them in a hotbed, as 



* In the county of Somerset the mowers found, near an 

 outlying barn where poultry were in the habit of picking 

 about, a partridge's nest, with several unhatched part- 

 ridge's eggs and the shells of three eggs of the common 

 hen, with all the appearances indicative of their having 

 contained chickens. Afterwards, when they were cutting 

 wheat, a brace of partridges and three common chickens 

 got up and flew off ; but the chickens could not keep up 

 with the partridges and were caught by the mowers. 

 These were evidently the produce of the hen's eggs, which 

 must have been laid by the hen in the nest of the partridge, 

 the hen having been attracted most probably by the sight 

 of the partridge's eggs. Now it is well known that the 

 incubation of a partridge is of longer duration than that of 

 a hen. When, therefore, the common hen's eggs were 

 hatched, the hen partridge must have hurried to the con- 

 clusion that the rest of the eggs (her own) were bad, and 

 that it was of no use to waste further time upon them ; 

 whereupon she went away with her foster-chickens, 

 leaving her own eggs to their fate. 



Here we have an instance of misled instinct. Nor is 

 the facility with which the chickens appear to have ac- 

 commodated themselves to the wild habits of their foster- 

 parents, so far as their powers would permit, uninstruct- 

 ive. They were in a fair way of returning to savage life ; 

 and, if a similar accident had happened in an uninhabited 

 or uncultivated country, who shall say what results might 

 have sprung from the connexion. 



t Crax. t TalegaUa Lathami (Gould.) 



