30 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Swallowing iudigcstrMc substances. 



Barbot, in his Description of North Guinea, 

 wherein he relates that the ambassador who was 

 sent from Morocco to the States General of the 

 United Provinces in the year 1659, brought over 

 to Holland, among other varieties of those coun- 

 tries, as a present, an ostrich, which died in Am- 

 sterdam through swallowing nails, which the 

 people continually supplied him with, upon the 

 supposition that it could digest iron like bread.; 

 and as a proof of this being the cause of its 

 death, he states, that upon being opened, about 

 eighty nails were found entire in its stomach. 

 Ranby and Valisnieri in several which they dis- 

 sected, always found the stomachs overloaded 

 with a variety of substances, such as glass, 

 stones, iron, wood, &c. ; and in one of them they 

 found a piece of stone which weighed upward* 

 of a pound. From the whole of the accounts, 

 there appears some reason to conclude that in 

 swallowing these different articles, they are actu- 

 ated by the same necessity which obliges the 

 smaller birds to pick up gravel, namely, to keep 

 the coats of the stomach asunder ; or it may pos- 

 sibly arise from a craving appetite, which may 

 keep the animal perpetually uneasy, unless the 

 great capacity of its stomach be tilled up, and 

 therefore to acquire rest, nutritious substances 

 not being obtainable, it swallows whatever comes 

 in its way. 



Some of the savage nations of Africa hunt 

 these birds for their flesh, of which they are *o 



