Thk Zoologist — December, 1876. 5175 



farming them for the sake of the feather market. Some successful 

 experiments which were instigated by the French Acclimatisation 

 Society in Algiers first directed attention to the capabilities of such 

 a trade. It was not until 1866 that domesticated ostriches bred at 

 the Cape, and so rapidly has the practice of ostrich farming grown 

 since that year that a census taken in 1875 ascertained that there 

 were then in different parts of the colony no fewer than 32,247 

 ostriches in a state of domestication. In 1858 there had been 

 exported from the Cape 1852 lbs. of feathers, of the value of 

 £12,688; while in 1874 the quantity had swollen to 36,829 lbs., 

 of the value of £205,640, or an average value of £5 12s. per lb. 

 Sufficient to show that ostrich farming is no unremunerative trade. 

 It was soon found that it did not require very much to start an ostrich 

 farm. A certain extent of ground needed to be surrounded with 

 no very elaborate fence ; crops of lucerne, the favourite food of the 

 bird, had to be cultivated, and then, provided the soil was suitable, 

 the ostriches did very well, bred readily in their domesticated 

 state, and endured to be plucked of their feathers once in eight 

 months. The chief requisite was that the soil should furnish 

 alkalies, either in salt-licks or in the shrubs growing wild upon it. 

 Farms supplying these conditions are in the colony termed "sweet- 

 veldts ;" those which do not are called "sour-veldts," and on these 

 ostriches cannot be maintained in a healthy state unless they are 

 given phosphates of lime, in the shape of pounded bones. It was 

 found that the ostriches were in best feather at their breeding time, 

 when it would not do to disturb their plumage for fear of inter- 

 rupting their successful nesting. Necessity therefore invented, 

 and soon improved upon, a method of artificial incubation, which 

 is now brought to such perfection that the eggs stand a better 

 chance of being hatched than they would if left to the natural care 

 of the parent birds. It is said that out of forty-five eggs forty-three 

 can now be hatched out with almost a certainty, and that ostriches 

 thus artificially brought into existence are just as strongly deve- 

 loped as those hatched in a wild state, where there is usually much 

 waste with the eggs deposited by the female birds. Only a part 

 of the number produced are incubated ; supplementary eggs are 

 left lying round the nest— it is said to afford their first food to the 

 newly-hatched chicken. 



At the proper time for robbing the ostriches of their beautiful 

 and cosily feathers — fine specimens are literally worth their weight 



