NOTE -BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 137 



common fowl does on her chickens ; the male occa- 

 sionally 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. 

 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 cuttino-s of their feathers. He imacfined, 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 flexible, 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 Yaillant to a single female. But he disturbed one 

 from a nest containing thirty eggs, surrounded by thir- 

 teen 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 copartnership, 

 such as turkeys and other incubating birds that make 

 their nests upon the ground will sometimes enter into.* 



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

 ing barn where poultry were in the habit of picking about, a par- 

 tridge's nest, with several unhatched partridge's eggs and the shells 

 of three eggs of the common hen, with all the appearances indica- 

 tive of their having contained chickens. Afterwards, Avhen they 

 were cutting wheat, a brace of partridges and three common 

 chickens got uj) and flew off; but the chickens could not keep xip 

 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 



