THE OSTRICH. 23 



Incubation Attention to the young. 



Recent travellers, however, assure us, that no 

 bird has a stronger affection for her offspring 

 than this, and that none watches her eggs with 

 greater assiduity. It happens, probably, in those 

 hot climates, that there is less necessity for the 

 continual incubation of the female ; and she fre- 

 quently leaves her eggs, which are in no fear of 

 being chilled by the weather: but though she 

 sometimes forsakes them by day, she always 

 carefully broods over them by night; and Kol- 

 ben, who saw great numbers of ostriches at the 

 Cape of Good Hope, affirms, from, his own ob- 

 servation, that they sit on their eggs like other 

 birds, and that the males and females perform 

 this task alternately. Nor is it more true that 

 they forsake their young as soon as excluded 

 from the shell. On the contrary, these are not 

 able to walk for several days after they are 

 hatched. During this time the old ones are very 

 assiduous in supplying them with grass and wa- 

 ter, and careful to defend them from harm : and 

 will even encounter every danger in their de- 

 fence. The females which are united to one 

 male, deposit all their eggs in the same place, to 

 the number of ten or twelve each: these they 

 hatch all together, the male also taking his turn 

 of sitting on them. Between sixty or seventy 

 eggs have sometimes been found in one nest. 

 The time of incubation is six weeks. 



M. Le Vaillant informs us, that he started an 



