142 A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



nowadays, nearly always hatched out in incubators, for, 

 as an authority has said, " the birds are too valuable 

 to be wasting their time." 



The incubation of ostrich eggs is a very expert task. 

 A level temperature of 98 or 99° is essential, and any 

 great variation is generally fatal ; however, occasionally 

 the eggs will hatch under the most unlikely conditions. 



The rearing, keeping, feeding, and selection of birds 

 is an extremely fine art, and expert knowledge is 

 eminently desirable. British East Africa has certainly 

 not suffered from a plethora of experts in this line, and 

 the comparatively slow progress made must in the main 

 be attributed to the existing ignorance. When one 

 considers the abstruseness of the questions connected 

 with the effect of feeding on feathers, of plucking before 

 the quill is ripe, of the effects of cold and rain, of the 

 selection of birds and of the desirability of weeding out 

 inferior specimens, one cannot help being astonished 

 at the results that have been obtained with the limited 

 knowledge at our disposal. It must not be thought 

 that we are altogether without our experts, but rather 

 that, although some breeders have knowledge, the 

 majority have entered on the task light-heartedly and 

 with a lack of knowledge which experience, however 

 dearly bought, can never wholly rectify. Ostrich 

 breeding seems one of those industries with regard to 

 which the Agricultural Department might with advan- 

 tage issue a short, concise and authoritative pamphlet. 



Ostriches are, generally speaking, healthy, though 

 liable to the attacks of a worm in the intestines. 

 Though this parasite occasionally causes death, far 

 more damage is suffered from extraneous marauders, of 

 whom lions and leopards come first, with native thieves 

 a good second. The young ostrich is to the lion a 



