THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 235 



his son how to hunt the Moa, the name belonging of old to 

 this species ; in these are described the ceremonies which 

 took place when one had been killed. They feasted on the 

 flesh and eggs, while the feathers served to adorn the arms 

 of the vanquishers. Some hills are yet strewed with the 

 bones of the Dinornis, the remains of these great feasts of 

 the hunters. 



Another colossal bird, the Epiornis, which formerly lived 

 in Madagascar, must have been of even greater size. One 

 of its eggs, which is now in the museum at Paris, is six 

 times as large as that of the ostrich, and it has been calcu- 

 lated that to fill the cavity would require 12,000 humming- 

 birds' eggs. Its shell, about two twenty-fifths of an inch 

 thick, could only be broken by a blow with a hammer. 

 What strength, then, must the beak of the young bird have 

 possessed to be able to make a hole in it ! 



What differences, also, in strength are found in birds ! 



When fleeing before the hunter, whose Arab steed comes 

 ever closer and closer, the alarmed and furious ostrich 

 presses its toes into the ground, and tears up the soil of the 

 desert, leaving deep marks beneath each footstep, while it 

 launches afar behind it a cloud of sand and pebbles. When, 

 on the contrary, a flock of humming-birds, attracted by the 

 expanded and floating flowers of the Victoria Regia, play 

 and gleam round them like a casket of topazes and rubies 

 struck by the rays of the sun, neither the smooth surface 

 of the lake nor the beautiful flowers are in the least de- 

 gree disturbed. And when one of these winged diamonds 

 perches itself upon a petal of their virgin corolla, it does 

 not even stir it. Again, when the fragile bird takes flight, 



