604 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVII. 



the distribution of these birds outside African limits. Mr. Kinnear writes : — 

 At a meeting of the British Ornithologists Club in May 1919, Lord Rothschild 

 described as a new race two ostriches, male and female, from the Syrian desert. 

 He gave as the distinguishing characters the " bill though not much shorter 

 is much narrower, while the tarsus and tail are distinctly shorter. They have 

 the same naked shield on the head as in S. camelus, but the horny shield as 

 in molybdophanes 



The history of these two birds is as follows : — Before the war Mr. J. Aharone 

 in Palestine obtained some ostrich eggs through Arabs from the Syrian desert. 

 These he sent to Lord Rothschild who, seeing that though they agreed with 

 other eggs from North Africa in being smooth and not pitted, they difiered 

 in their smaller size and higher polish, "\^Tote at once and urged Mr. Aharone 

 to obtain some adult skins. This Mi'. Aharone was not at once able to do, but 

 he obtained through the Arabs two live fully grown young ones which he reared 

 up to maturity in spite of the war in Palestine, and afterwards killed and 

 sent to Lord Rothschild after we had occupied Palestine. As Lord Rothschild 

 pointed out ' ' the fact that ostriches inhabit the Syrian desert and Arabia has 

 been known for a long time — in fact there are several passages in the bible re- 

 lating to the bu'd ". Cannon Tristram in his " Fauna and Flora of Palestine " 

 states that the ostrich only just claims a place in the Fauna of Palestine by 

 its occurrence in the further parts of Belka, the eastern plains of Moab. It is 

 no doubt but a straggler from central Arabia though formerly far more 

 abundant. Xenophon speaks of its abundance in his time in Syi'ia (Anal ; 

 1-5) and we have traditional accounts of its former existences in Sind. A 

 portion of an ostrich sldn captured at Belka and given to Canon Tristram is 

 in the British Museum. 



Later, ^h: Douglas CaiTuthers writing in the "Ibis" for 1920 mentions that he 

 had observed an ostrich in N. W. Arabia at Wadi Hidrij, a hundred and twenty 

 miles S. E. of the Dead Sea. He also rode up fairly close to some in the black- 

 stone desert called by the Bedouins Ar-des-suivan and further S. E. he occasion- 

 ally saw traces' of them and on the edge of the Nafud he found broken eggs. 

 He considers that the Mecca Railway marks the extreme western range of 

 this bird in Arabia and does not think they go North of the 31st paralleled. 

 . W. F. Ainsworth who took part m the Euphrates Expedition of ? notes that 

 " ostriches have long since been exterminated in Mesopotamia " (Personal 

 narative of the Euphrates Expedition). 



This briefly is what is known of the ostrich outside Africa in modern times, 

 and though there are various traditions to the contrary it is unlikely that the 

 ostrich was fomid beyond the desert of Upper Syria and Mesopotamia in his- 

 toric times. 



Before going on to remark on the extinct ostriches in Europe and Asia it may 

 perhaps be as well to note that more than one species and race of the ostrich 

 is found in Africa. In the North we have the typical form StrutMo camelus 

 camelus formerly inhabiting Egypt and Algeria, now found in Nubia, the Sudan, 

 Sahara to Senigambia, and S. Negiria. In the North-East the SomaU ostrich 

 S. molyhdophanes from SoniaUland through GaUaland to the Tanna river ; 

 and in British East Africa, Tanganika territory to Uganda, S. massaicus the 

 Masai Ostrich. Africa, south of the Zambesi, is inhabited by S. australis 

 the bird from which most of the ostrich feathers are obtained. Besides 

 being distinguishable by certain characters of the skin these ostriches can also 

 be separated by their eggs which are all shghtly different. 



In the PUocene of the Siwalik hills the fossil remains of an ostrich were dis- 

 covered many years ago and named by MLne Edwards StrutMo asiatictis and 

 years later in 1894 Dr. Forsyth Major described a femur and a pelvis of another 

 example from the Lower Phocene of Mityline in the Island of Samos, caUing 

 it S. karatheodoris. Besides these fossil bones a number of fossil eggs have been 



