AN OSTRICH FARM. 231 



to be looking about curiously upon the great world they have so strangely come into. Then, 

 after two clays, they begin to attend to the duties of life by setting up a mill. This is precisely the 

 fact. The little things, taught by instinct, eat no food till their gizzards are prepared, for which 

 purpose they go about picking up little hard stones, of no doubt the exact kind required. After this 

 preparatory process is completed they eat a little soft green food. This infant flock is gathered into a 

 warm room at night ; some of the youngest are put into the ' mother ' crib of the incubator, whilst 

 others are accommodated with a lodging between blankets, or otherwise comfortably provided for. 

 We find, by adding together the above flocks, that we have some seventy-four chickens, all hatched 

 since August by the incubator all alive and well. 



" We next mounted our horses, and proceeded to an enclosure separated by the river from the 

 home ground. In this enclosure we found fifteen full-grown birds, or mostly full-grown, among which 

 were an old cock and two laying hens, and possibly a pullet, which Mr. Douglas told us he thought 

 was just beginning to lay. The old cock was very savage and fightable, and was given some mealies 

 (maize) to amuse him while we rode quietly by. The old fellow attacked his master while on horse- 

 back some little time ago. He succeeded in getting his breast up to the horse, and kicked most 

 furiously ; but, owing to the unusual position he had attained, his kicks went for nothing, except once, 

 when his toe ripped open the skin of the horse's flank, which set the horse going in turn. The fact 

 is, that if the old birds only knew how to use their beaks as well as their feet, they would be most 

 dangerous animals. As it is, though they peck off your hat, and pull your ears, their operations in 

 this way do not amount to much. These fifteen birds have a large enclosure all to themselves. And 

 here we may as well say that there are no sheep on the farm, and in the enclosures dedicated to the 

 Ostriches, except in the home field, no other kind of stock. We next, after a mile, more or less, came 

 to an enclosure in which were a very fine old cock and two laying hens. Here we were shown a 

 nest, after due precaution having been taken to decoy the old monarch into a pen with some mealies, 

 and safely shut him up ; but we must confess that we gave one or two rather anxious looks towards 

 the pen aforesaid, thinking it just possible that he might get out of it and come and look after us. 

 The two hens were both sitting down, which we were informed they do ; also, that when one goes 

 to lay, the other goes to keep her company, though we did not inquire whether that was the etiquette 

 of Ostrich life, or the special habits of these two birds. We were informed that the hens lay 

 their eggs somewhere round about the nest that is, within a few yards, and that the cock bird 

 trundles them along, and places them in due order in the nest. In fact, the male Ostrich seems 

 the A T ery antipodes of roosters and drakes, for he takes the chief solicitude about the future of the 

 eggs, placing them in the nest, and always sitting on them by night, with warding and divers other 

 little attentions and performances necessary to a successful issue of incubation, which our good friend 

 Mr. Douglas has carefully observed, after much patient watching, and has duly made a note of. 

 Here we saw a fine nest of eggs, and proceeded to count them, but were stopped with the information 

 that they would never hatch. No ! never. And why ] Simply because they were artificial ; and so 

 good is the imitation, that they deceived not only novices like ourselves, but even the Ostriches, who 

 ought to have known better. 



" Out of the enclosure, given up to the exclusive use of this polygamous family of three, we 

 entered through a locked gate into a large enclosure, or paddock, in which were fifty-eight one- and 

 two-year old birds. They all looked exceedingly well, and though they did not dance, they seemed 

 full of life. They do sometimes favour the spectators with a dance, and it is one of the funniest 

 of all the freaks or habits of animals that evidence a sense of the jokeful we ever beheld. We 

 once saw some twenty nearly full-grown birds waltzing together. They began with a sort of 

 sidling slow revolution on their toes, moving their wings gently up and down, and presently they 

 seemed to get into the spirit of the thing without the aid of any fiddler that we saw, and span 

 round at a rate that would have astonished any one but a dancing dervish. In dancing, they 

 swept round and round without ever coming into contact with each other. Our fifty-eight young 

 friends soon seemed anxious to make our acquaintance, or, perhaps, to see if there were any 

 mealies, and they came up all round us, some two or three at a time, poking their little and 

 long necks right into one's face. Quite docile and quiet, yet they seemed very inquisitive, and 

 we should fully have expected, had we indulged in such vanities, to have seen our diamond breast-pin 



