OSTRICHES. 33 



The Struthionine birds are now nearly confined to the southern hemisphere, and the 

 living forms are only the last survivors of a once numerous order, which also domi- 

 nated in Europe, and probably North America, since, from the strata underlaying 

 London, several fossil remains have been described, the so-called Macrornis, said to be 

 related to the emu, and the so-called Megalornis emuinus of similar affinities. Also 

 from New Mexico is a fossil ostrich known, the Diatryma gigantea of Cope. 



It may be interesting to quote as a conclusion Mr. Wallace's ideas as to the origin 

 of the birds in question, and how he accounts for their present disconnected distri- 

 bution. 



During the early period, he contends, when the great southern continents South 

 America, Africa, and Australia were equally free from the incursions of the 

 destructive felines of the north, the Struthiones, or ostrich type of birds, was probably 

 developed into its existing forms. It is not at all necessary to suppose that these three 

 continents were at any time united, in order to account for the distribution of these 

 great terrestrial birds. . . . The ancestral Struthious type may, like the marsupial, 

 have once spread over the larger portion of the globe ; but as higher forms, especially 

 I'arnivora, became developed, it would be exterminated everywhere but in those 

 regions where it was free from their attacks. In each of these it would develop into 

 special forms adapted to surrounding conditions ; and the large size, great strength, 

 and excessive speed of the ostrich may have been a comparatively late development 

 caused by its exposure to the attacks of enemies which rendered such modification 

 necessary. 



The ostrich the largest, and the first to open the series of the living birds belongs 

 to the genus Struthio, which alone constitutes the family STRUTHIONID^E and the 

 super-family STRUTHIOIDEJE. A native of the plains and deserts of Africa, it 

 has been known to civilized man since the beginning of the history of the western 

 nations, noted for its size, its swiftness of foot, and the beauty of its curled tail and 

 wing plumes, which, since time immemorial, have been used as signs of distinction 

 and as ornament, therefore being the object of an important trade on the dark con- 

 tinent. Huge fans of ostrich-plumes belong to the attributives of the African and 

 Oriental rulers of to-day as they did during the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs ; the 

 ladies of olden Rome prized its unrivaled feathers as highly as any slave of the present 

 fashion, and live ostriches were among the strange animals which, nearly two thousand 

 years ago, were exhibited to the gaze of the populace in the arenas and amphitheatres, 

 while to-day that giant is indispensable to any menagerie or zoological garden of repu- 

 tation. Hottentots and other African savages kill him for the feathers, Arabian sheiks 

 and English tourists hunt him for sport, lions and other wild beasts kill him whenever 

 they find an opportunity ; and although the ostrich is one of the few bii'ds deprived 

 of the capacity of flight, yet he is not exterminated, nor is he likely to become so in a 

 near future, for several reasons : his swiftness of foot, his great productiveness, and 

 his recent domestication, which promises to increase the number of living ostriches 

 by ten for each one destroyed by the repeating rifle. 



The nearest allies of the true ostriches are the South American naudus, which differ 

 from the other birds of the same order by having the wing-bones comparatively well 

 developed, especially by a long humerus, and there being three fingers on the hand. 

 They have also a strong ambiens muscle, which is absent in the cassowaries and emus ; the 

 gall-bladder is absent. Inter se the African and the American ostriches are distinguished 

 by the former having two toes only, the third and fourth, respectively, with four and 

 VOL. iv. 3 





