214 THE OSTRICH. 



V. 



THE muscular strength of the ostrich is extraordi- 

 nary. "In the desert," says M. Daumas, "it has 

 no other enemy to fear but man. It resists the 

 dog, the jackal, the hyrena, and the eagle : man alone 

 triumphs over it." 



Livingstone remarks that he saw one, pursued by 

 dogs, break the spine of the one nearest to it with 

 a blow of its foot. M. Edouard Verreaux saw a 

 negro die from a blow received in the stomach 

 from the foot of an ostrich. An Arab hunter, of 

 whom more presently, narrowly escaped a similar 

 fate. 



No better idea of its strength can be given than 

 the fact of its having been employed for riding 

 from the remotest period. Mounted ostriches figured 

 in the Eoman circus. 



A certain tyrant of Egypt, named Firmin, employed 

 them for his use ; and the natives of Africa often 

 do the same. 



"One sees at the Cape," says Span-man, "in the 

 Government menagerie, several tame ostriches. These 

 easily allow themselves to be mounted by those who 

 wish to make the attempt." 



We read that an English traveller, Mr. Moore, 

 encountered in the Sahara an Arab mounted on an 



