A KARROO FARM. 251 



round the chest and under the wings ; to this two long 

 " reims" (skin halters) are attached, and the bird is 

 then easily driven by two men — each holding a 

 "reim." Another plan often adopted, is to fasten a 

 " reim " round the bird's neck ; this is held by a man 

 on horseback, who canters alongside of the ostrich, 

 and gets over the ground with his willing captive in 

 very easy fashion. The ostrich is wonderfully 

 amenable to pressure upon the neck, and makes the 

 journey under such circumstances with far more than 

 the docility even of the tractable sheep. After 

 some trouble, a certain number of birds, which 

 have been brought up early in the morning from 

 distant parts of the camp by the Kaffir herds, are 

 driven one by one into the small fold. Here they 

 are guided into a corner, and then a hurdle is set up 

 against them ; then a bag or small sack is placed 

 over the head ; the bird stands perfectly still, and is 

 speedily denuded of its best feathers by the aid of a 

 pair of garden pruning scissors, which do their work 

 neatly and expeditiously, leaving about half-an-inch 

 of quill stump remaining ; this soon afterwards 

 becomes loose, and is easily and painlessly removed, 

 giving place to a fresh growth. 



There is no pain whatever in this clipping 

 process, but in the earlier days of ostrich farming, 

 when the feathers were pulled out bodily, I fancy 

 there must have been some suffering. In many 

 cases, instead of using bags for the head, boxes are 

 employed during the process of denudation. One 

 after another the birds are rapidly driven in, clipped, 

 and turned out again, until there is a great pile of 

 feathers — prime whites, feminas, drabs, blacks, 

 spadonas, and the rest. At the time I write of, 



