OSTRICHES. 107 



Hinging out his clumsy legs, and twisting himself about 

 as he runs, till you almost expect to see him come to 

 pieces, or, at any rate, fling off a leg, as a lobster casts 

 a claw, or a frightened lizard parts from its tail. An 

 ostrich's joints seem to be all loose, like those of a lay- 

 figure when not properly tightened up. He rapidly dis- 

 appears from view ; and the last you see of him he is, 

 as Mark Twain has it, "still running" apparently 

 with no intention of stopping till he has reached the 

 very centre of Africa. But his mad scamper will most 

 probably end a few miles off, with a tumble into a 

 wire fence, and a broken leg. 



Sometimes, however, ostriches, when they take 

 fright, run so long and get so far away that their 

 owner never recovers them. One we heard of, to 

 whose tail a mischievous boy had tied a newspaper, 

 went off at railway speed, and no tidings of it were 



ever received. Once, when T was collecting his 



birds for plucking, one of them was unaccountably 

 seized with a sudden panic, and bolted; and though 



T mounted at once and rode after it, he neither 



saw nor heard of it again. 



On a large farm, when plucking is contemplated, 

 it is anything but an easy matter to collect the birds 

 the gathering together of ours was generally a 

 work of three days. Men have to be sent out in all 

 directions to drive the birds up, by twos and threes, 

 from the far-off spots to which they have wandered ; 

 little troops are gradually brought together, and col- 

 lected, first in a large enclosure, then in a small one, 



