154 HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. 



too, was looking over a fence into a camp, when the 

 sharp eye of an ostrich spied a beautiful diamond in 

 his pin, and in an instant the jewel was picked out and 

 swallowed. A kind of court-mar lial was held on the 

 ostrich; the relative values of himself and of the 

 diamond being accurately calculated, that his judges 

 might decide whether he should live or die. Fortun- 

 ately for him it was just the time when ostriches were 

 expensive ; and his value was estimated at £100, while 

 the diamond was only worth £90. Those £10 saved 

 his life ; and the diamond was allowed to remain and 

 perform the part of an extra-good millstone in his 

 interior. Had he waited till the present time to furnish 

 his internal economy thus expensively he would have 

 been very promptly sacrificed. But people should not 

 wear diamonds on ostrich farms. 



When, soon after our return from the Cape, we were 

 staying for a time in London, one of our first expedi- 

 tions was to the Zoo. There, with great delight and 

 amusement, we walked about, looking up one after 

 another of our old South African friends. But it was 

 a cold, gloomy day ; and in the houses as well as out of 

 doors the exiles from that sunny land seemed much 

 depressed by their changed conditions of climate. The 

 meerkats, curled up in a half-torpid state, were no 

 longer the merry little rogues they had once been, when 

 in happier days they stood on their hind legs outside 

 their burrows, toasting their little backs in their native 

 sunshine. The baboon was morose ; the snakes sleepy ; 

 the African buffalo no longer terrible as in the wilds 



