ORDER GRALLiE. 438 



Here, as the reader will perceive, there is no statement of 

 the formal separation of any eggs, but merely of the appli- 

 cation of such as have not been incubated to the purposes 

 of food. The same fact is affirmed by Nieremberg in the 

 most positive manner. 



Dobrizoffer also makes a remark which is rather in sup- 

 port of the polygamy of these birds, and may serve to ex- 

 plain the inequality in the number of eggs found in the 

 nests of the ostrich. *' Struthionis feminae quotquot vicinae 

 degunt, ova sua in eodem loco deponent." After this fact, 

 which may also be common to the ostrich, properly so called, 

 we must not be surprised that authors have differed so much 

 respecting the number of its eggs, which Aristotle makes 

 twenty-five, Willoughby fifty, and Elian mounts up to 

 eighty. 



Levaillant moreover cites a fact, which may have been the 

 occasion of some errors. When the savages, who are very 

 fond of the eggs of the ostrich, find a nest of them, they 

 carry them off successively with a rake, to prevent the 

 mother from perceiving that they have been touched ; and if 

 this thieving be carried on with proper caution, the bird will 

 go on to lay as many as fifty eggs, never beginning her incu- 

 bation until her number be completed. It is obvious enough, 

 how the information of a native that he had taken forty or 

 fifty eggs from the nest of an ostrich, might mislead a tra- 

 veller into the supposition of a natural variation in the number 

 of eggs laid by these birds. 



These eggs, the ground of which is a dirty -white, marbled 

 with clear yellow, are very large, and might hold a pint of 

 liquid. One of them, laid by a female ostrich in the 

 menagerie of Paris, which was perfect, and as large as the 

 eggs brought from Africa, weighed two pounds fourteen 

 ounces. It was six inches and a half in depth, and its form 

 was that of a common egg. 



VOL. VIII. F V 



