26 HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. 



sure to be unanimous, and that is a strong feeling of 

 rivalry, and jealousy of one another, each one striving 

 to be first in the affections of master and mistress. 

 A great fondness for and sympathy with animals is 



not the least among the many tastes which T and 



I have in common ; and in our up-country home, far 

 off as we were from human neighbours, we were 

 always surrounded by numbers of animal and bird 

 friends. 



We began to form the nucleus of our small men- 

 agerie while still at Walmer ; and one of our first 

 acquisitions was a secretary bird. The friends near 

 whom we lived possessed three of these creatures, 

 which had all been found, infants together, in one 

 nest on an ostrich farm near Port Elizabeth ; and to 

 my great delight, one of them was given to us. " Jacob," 

 as we named him, turned out a most amusing pet. 

 His personal appearance was decidedly comical ; re- 

 minding us of a little old-fashioned man in a grey 

 coat and tight black knee-breeches ; with pale flesh- 

 coloured stockings clothing the thinnest and most 

 angular of legs, the joints of which might have been 

 stiff with chronic rheumatism, so slowly and cautiously 

 did Jacob bend them when picking anything up, or 

 when settling himself down into his favourite squatting 

 attitude. Not by any means a nice old man did Jacob 

 resemble, but an old reprobate, with evil-looking eye, 

 yellow parchment complexion, bald head, hooked nose 

 and fiendish grin ; with his shoulders shrugged up, his 

 hands tucked away under his coat-tails, and several 



