1833.] HABITS OF THE OSTRICH. 91 
The cock when on the nest lies very close; I have myself almost 
ridden over one. It is asserted that at such times they are occa- 
sionally fierce, and even dangerous, and that they have been 
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 observe in Burchell’s 
travels in South Africa, that he remarks, “‘ Having killed a male 
ostrich, and the feathers being dirty, it was said by the Hotten- 
tots to be a nest bird.” I understand that the male emu in the 
Zoological Gardens takes charge of the nest: this habit, there- 
fore, is common to the family. 
The Gauchos unanimously affirm that several females lay in 
one nest. I have been positively told that four or five hen birds 
have been watched to go in the middle of the day, one after the 
other, to the same nest. I may add, also, that it is believed in 
Africa, that two or more females lay in one 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 to fifty ; and accord- 
ing to Azara, sometimes to seventy or eighty. Now although 
it is most probable, from the number of eggs found in one dis- 
trict 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. Azara states,t that a female 
in a state of domestication laid seventeen eggs, each at the inter- 
val of three days one from another. 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, as is stated to be the 
case, 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 
* Burchell’s Travels, vol. i. p. 280. 
+ Azara, vol. iv. p. 173, 
