428 NATURAL HISTORY. 



African continent. Its head and neck are naked, or only covered by a 

 sparse hair-like down. The body is feathered — black in the male, brown 

 in the female ; while the legs are naked, and the feet have but two toes. 

 The wings are very small and, like the tail, are covered with white feathers 

 — the highly prized plumes of commerce. The adult ostrich stands some 

 seven feet high, and weighs from a hundred and fifty to two hundred 

 pounds. 



The first reference to the ostrich occurs in the book of Job. " Gavest 

 thou . . . win^s and feathers unto the ostrich? which leaveth her eggs in 

 the earth, and warmeth them in the dust and forgetteth that the foot may 

 crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. . . ." The ostrich is 

 represented on the ancient temples of Thebes, and the Pharaohs had their 

 fans of ostrich plumes. In ancient Rome, two thousand years ago, live 

 ostriches were exhibited to the populace, and the dames of that luxurious 

 city prized the feathers as highly as do the ladies of fashion to-day. And 

 yet, until 1862, there was no serious attempt to domesticate this valuable 

 bird. All the feathers w r ere taken from the wild birds, and no attempts 

 were made to keep it from extermination. To-day all this is changed ; 

 but before considering a modern ostrich-farm let us look a moment at the 

 bird in its wild state. 



So many, and so conflicting, are the statements that it is a considerable 

 task to say exactly what the characteristics of the ostrich are. As Mr. 

 Biggan expresses it, " the ostrich is a wonderful paradox. . . . He is 

 capable of scanning the whole horizon, and yet, falling easily into some 

 hole under his feet ; he is both a gourmand and an epicure ; he may be 

 kept in bounds by a fence of a single wire, yet when panic-stricken, he will 

 risk a collision with a stone wall, and dash himself to death ; he is both 

 blood-thirsty and gentle ; bolder than a lion, and more timid than a spring- 

 bok ; a polygamist and a celibate ; capable of extreme parental tenderness, 

 yet sometimes eating his own offspring ; at once the stupidest and the 

 most cunning of birds." From these and other conflicting characteristics, 

 together with an enormous amount of exaggeration and imagination, the 

 ostrich of the books has been evolved. To most persons an ostrich 

 is a bird which, when its head is buried in the sand, believes its whole 

 body is concealed ; a bird which lays its eggs in the sand, and then 

 leaves them to their fate. In realit}*, the ostrich possesses neither of these 

 characteristics. 



The eggs, about fourteen in number, are laid, either in some natural 

 depression, or in a hollow, which both birds of a pair scrape in the soil, 

 and around which they dig a trench, to protect the nest from the rain. 

 The cock and the hen then alternately sit upon the eggs, — the cock during 



