402 THE OSTRICH AND THE CASSOWARY 



difficult it would be for the brood to find any other adequate 

 food in its sterile haunts. In Senegal, where the heat is 

 extreme, the ostrich, it is said, sits at night only upon those eggs 

 which are to be rendered fertile, but in extratropical Africa, 

 where the sun has less power, the mother remains constant in 

 her attentions to the eggs both day and night. 



The number of eggs which the ostrich usually sits upon is ten ; * 

 but the Hottentots, who are very fond of them, upon discovering 

 a nest, seize fitting opportunities to remove one or two at a time ; 

 this induces the bird to deposit more, and in this manner she 

 has been known, like the domestic hen, to lay between forty and 

 fifty in a season. Thus also the Icelanders and other Norsemen 

 force the eider-duck, by repeated plunderings of her nest, to divest 

 herself of all her down ; and when she has no more to spare, the 

 gander willingly deprives himself of part of his snow-white and 

 rose-red garment. 



But the ostrich has other enemies besides the savage or the 

 hungry traveller to fear for its young brood. Thus the natives 

 about the Orange river assert that, when the birds have left 

 their nest in the middle of the day in search of food, a white 

 vulture may be seen soaring in mid air, with a stone between 

 his talons. Having carefully surveyed the ground beloT^ him, 

 he suddenly lets fall the stone, and then follows it in rapid 

 descent. On running to the spot you will find a nest of pro- 

 bably a score of eggs, some of them broken by the vulture 

 who used this ingenious device for procuring himself a dainty 

 meal. This reminds one of a similar artifice through which 

 the sea-eagle of the north overpowers even the ox ; an artifice 

 which Leopold von Buch * would willingly have doubted, had it 

 not been frequently related to him, too circumstantially and too 

 positively throughout the whole extent of the Norwegian isles* 

 The eagle casts himself into the waves, arises with drooping 

 wings, and rolls himself upon the beach until they are com- 

 pletely covered with sand and gravel. Then he mounts into 

 the air, and soars above his victim. Close above its head he 

 flings sand and pebbles into its eyes, and increases the terror 

 of the brute by repeated strokes with his wings. The be^ 

 wildered ox runs along with mad speed, and at length falls 



I 



* Travels in Norway. i 



