4 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
known to attack a man on horseback, trying to kick and leap on him. My informer pointed out 
to me an old man whom he had seen much terrified by one chasing him. I understand that 
the male emu in the Zoological Gardens takes charge of the nest: this habit, therefore, is 
common to the family. 
“The Gauchos unanimously affirm that several females lay in one nest. 
positively told that four or five hen birds have been watched to go, in the middle of the day, 
one after another, to the same nest... . Although this habit at first appears very strange, I 
think the cause may be explained in a simple manner. The number of eggs in the nest 
varies from twenty to forty, and even fifty; and according to Azara even seventy or eighty. 
Now, although it is most probable, from the number of the eggs found in one district being 
so extraordinarily great in proportion to the parent birds, and likewise from the state of the 
ovarium of the hen, that she may, in the course of the season, lay a large number, yet the 
time required must be very long. . If the hen was obliged to hatch her own eggs before 
the last was laid, the first probably would be addled; but if each laid a few eggs at successive 
periods in different nests, and several hens . . . combined together, then the eggs in one 
collection would be nearly of the same age. If the number of eggs in one of these nests is, 
as I believe, not greater on an average than the number laid by one female in the season, 
then there must be as many nests as females, and each cock bird will have its fair share of 
the labour of incubation: and that during a period when the females probably could not sit, 
from not having finished laying. I have before mentioned the great number of huachos, or 
deserted eggs; and that in one day’s hunting twenty were found in this state. It appears 
odd that so many should be wasted. Does it not arise from the difficulty of several females 
I have been 
Photo by the Duchess of Bedford 
WHITE RHEAS 
These are only varieties of the common form, not a distinct breed 
