225 



as of the bird creation. It may be considered, there, 

 lore, as an animal made to fill up that.chasm in na- 

 ture which separates one class of beings from ano- 

 ther. It is usually seven feet hi#h from the top of 

 the head to the ground. The external eye is like 

 that of a man, the upper eye lid being adorned with 

 eye-lashes which are longer than those on the lid 

 below. 



They inhabit the most solitary desarts, where there 

 ae few vegetables, and where the rain never comes. 

 The Arabians assert, that the ostrich never drinks ; 

 and the place of its habitation confirms the assertion. 

 In these regions, ostriches are seen in large flocks, 

 which to the distant spectator appear like a regiment 

 of cavalry. The ostrich is of all other animals the 

 most voracious. It will devour leather, hair, grass, 

 iron, stones, or any thing that is given. But tho^e 

 substances, which the coats of the stomach cannot 

 soften, pass whole ; so that hair, stones, and iron, 

 are excluded in the form in which they were de- 

 voured. 



In their native desarts, however, they live chiefly 

 upon vegetables, where they lead an inoffensive and 

 social life ; the male, as Thevenot assures us, assort- 

 ing with the female with connubial fidelity. They 

 Jay generally from forty to fifty eggs. It has beeu 

 commonly reported, that the female deposits them in 

 the sand, leaves them to be hatched by the heat of 

 the climate, and then permits the young to shift for 

 themselves. Very little, however, of this is true : 

 no bird has a stronger affection for her young: 

 none watches her eggs with greater assiduity. Indeed 

 in those hot climates, there is no necessity for the con- 

 tinual incubation of the female ; but though the fe- 

 male forsakes her eggs by day, she carefully broods 

 over them by night. Then they sit on their eggs 

 like other birds, and the male and female take this 

 office by turns. Nor do they forsake their young 

 alter they are excluded the shell. On the contrary, 

 the young ones are not even able to walk for several 



L5 



