loo OSTRICH HABITS. [chap. v. 



nest.* Although this habit at first appears very strange, I 

 think the cause may be explained in a simple manner. The 

 number of eggs in the nest varies from twenty to forty, and 

 even to fifty ; and, according to Azara, sometimes to seventy 

 or eighty. Now although it is most probable, from the 

 number of eggs found in one district being so extra- 

 ordinarily great in proportion to the parent birds, and like- 

 wise from the state of the ovarium of the hen, that she may 

 in the course of the season lay a large number, yet the time 

 required must be very long. Azara states t that a female in 

 a state of domestication laid seventeen eggs, each at the 

 interval of three days one from another. If the hen was 

 obliged to hatch her own eggs, before the last was laid the 

 first probably would be addled ; but if each laid a few eggs 

 at successive periods, in different nests, and several hens, as 

 is stated to be the case, combined together, then the eggs 

 in one collection would be nearly of the same age. If the 

 number of eggs in one of these nests is, as I believe, not 

 greater on an average than the number laid by one female 

 in the season, then there must be as many nests as females, 

 and each cock bird will have its fair share of the labour of 

 incubation ; and that during a period when the females 

 probably could not sit, from not having finished laying. | I 

 have before mentioned the great numbers of huachos, or 

 deserted eggs ; so that in one day's hunting twenty were 

 found in this state. It appears odd that so many should be 

 wasted. Does it not arise from the difficulty of several 

 females associating together, and finding a male ready to 

 undertake the office of incubation ? It is evident that there 

 must at first be some degree of association between at least 

 two females ; otherwise the eggs would remain scattered 

 over the wide plains, at distances far too great to allow of 

 the male collecting them into one nest : some authors have 

 believed that the scattered eggs were deposited for the 

 young birds to feed on. This can hardly be the case in 

 America, because the huachos, although often found addled 

 and putrid, are generally whole. 



When at the Rio Negro in Northern Patagonia, I 



* Burchell's " Travels," vol. i., p. 280, 



t Azara, vol. iv., p. 173. 

 _ { Lichtenstein, however, asserts ("Travels," vol. ii., p. 25) that the hens begrin 

 sitting: when they have laid ten or twelve egrgs ; and that they continue laying- 

 I presume, in another nest. This appears to me very improbable. He asserts 

 that four or five hens associate for incubation with one cock, who sits only at 

 aig:ht 



