166 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



and grain, the meat becomes juicy and tender. The 

 fact of its prohibition by the Jewish legislation 

 would indicate that ostrich-meat was employed as 

 food in former times. Firmus, one of the kings 

 of Egypt, it is said, used to dine off ostrich flesh ; and 

 according to Lampridius, the Emperor Heliogabalus, on 

 the occasion of a great feast, caused the brains of six 

 hundred ostriches to be served up in one dish. Africanus 

 especially commends ostrich brains. It is related of Leo 

 Africanus that he partook of ostrich-meat in Numidia, 

 where it is said young ostriches were then fattened 

 expressly for the table. Strabo gives a curious account 

 of the Struthophages, a black tribe on the Upper Nile, 

 who hunted and lived upon ostriches, and clothed them- 

 selves with the skin of this bird. 



A recent observer. Canon Tristram, has remarked that 

 the Arabs of the present day eat ostrich-meat, and that 

 he himself has tasted it and found it palatable enough. 

 Mr. John Parkes, of Wheatlands, in the Cape Colony 

 in 1875, killed a young bird that had broken its leg, and 

 had the meat converted into steaks and " biltong " or 

 dried meat. It was said to eat " like young beef, juicy 

 and tender, with just a suspicion of a sweetish flavour, 

 usually undiscoverable in the legitimate article." 



A kouskoussou surmounted by cutlets of fat taken 

 from the breast of the ostrich, is said to be a royal dish 

 of the desert; while the steam from the boiled fat 

 imparts an unctuous taste and gamey flavour to the 

 whole. 



The best account, however, we have of the gastro- 

 nomic flavour of the ostrich is furnished in the details of 

 a dinner given at Marseilles in Nov., 1871, as recorded in 

 the " Bulletin of the Society of Acclimatation of Paris " 

 (vol. ix., p. 154). A young ostrich, one of a brood of 

 eleven, which was being raised with care in the gardens 

 of the Society there, had the misfortune to break its leg. 

 Thereupon the President of the local Society, M. Ad. 

 Lucy, summoned a meeting of the council to decide upon 

 the food qualities of- the young bird. Stripped of its 



