434 CLASS AVES. 



The ostriches, properly speaking, make no nest ; they hol- 

 low out a place upon the sand, where they deposit their 

 eggs. Under the torrid zone, the heat of the sun during the 

 day dispenses them from the cares of incubation, which is 

 performed only din-ing the night ; but on either side of the 

 tropics, these birds hatch without intermission. Jannequin, 

 who made a voyage to Senegal in 1639, relates, that having 

 put in a chest two ostrich''s eggs, enveloped in tow, and hav- 

 ing visited them a long time after, he found one broken, and 

 that a young ostrich came out, which lived on minced plants 

 for eight days. But it is impossible to attach any credit to 

 this recital, especially as the same author tells us that he 

 emptied the other egg to bring it home to France, which one 

 would think ought to have been in the same predicament as 

 the first, but was not. Unsuccessful attempts were made to 

 hatch artificially the eggs laid by the ostrich in the French 

 menagerie ; but as the male was dead before they had been 

 laid, it is probable that they had not been fecundated. 



There are no very certain data from which Ave can calcu- 

 late the period of incubation ; it appears to last for about six 

 weeks. The young ones walk immediately after their birth. 

 As they find in the torrid zone the degree of heat necessary 

 for them, and suitable food, the mother abandons them 

 directly. But at the Cape, and in other less warm countries, 

 she continues to afford them her assistance in procuring food, 

 &c., as long as it is necessary, and defends them with no small 

 degree of courage. 



M. Cuvier, who examined a foetus ready to issue from the 

 eggf found it altogether covered with feathers of a reddish- 

 grey, spotted with black. It had three black longitudinal 

 lines on the head, and on the back of the neck. This plu- 

 mage continued during the first year ; it afterwards fell, to 

 return no more, on those parts which were to become naked, 



