142 the; ostrich. 



expanses of grass without trees, but you seldom see a 

 treeless horizon. The ostrich is generally seen quietly 

 feeding on some spot where no one can approach him 

 without being detected by his wary eye. As the waggon 

 moves along far to the windward he thinks it is intending 

 to circumvent him, so he rushes up a mile or so from the 

 leeward, and so near to the front oxen that one sometimes 

 gets a shot at the silly bird. When he begins to run all 

 the game in sight follow his example. I have seen this 

 folly taken advantage of when he was quietly feeding in 

 a valley open at both ends. A number of men would com- 

 mence running, as if to cut off his retreat from the end 

 through which the wind came ; and although he had the 

 whole country hundreds of miles before him by going to 

 the other end, on he madly rushed to get past the men, 

 and so was speared. He never swerves from the course 

 he once adopts, but only increases his speed. 



When the ostrich is feeding his pace is from twenty to 

 twenty-two niches ; when walking, but not feeding, it is 

 twenty-six inches ; and when terrified, as in the case 

 noticed, it is from eleven and a half to thirteen and even 

 fourteen feet in length. Only in one case was I at all 

 satisfied of being able to count the rate of speed by a stop 

 watch, and, if I am not mistaken, there were thirty in ten 

 seconds ; generally one's eye can no more follow the legs 

 than it can the spokes of a carriage wheel in rapid motion. 

 If we take the above number, and twelve feet stride as the 

 average pace, we have a speed of twenty-six miles an 

 hour. It cannot be very much above that, and is therefore 

 slower than a railway locomotive. They are sometimes 

 shot by the horseman making a cross cut to their unde- 

 viating course, but few Englishmen ever succeed in killing 

 them. 



The ostrich begins to lay her eggs before she has fixed on 

 a spot for a nest, which is only a hollow a few inches deep 

 in the sand, and about a yard in diameter. Solitary eggs, 

 named by the Bechuanas " lesetla," are thus found lying 

 forsaken all over the country, and become a prey to the 

 jackal. She seems averse to risking a spot for a nest, and 

 often lays her eggs in that of another ostrich, so that as 

 many as forty -five have been found in one nest. Some 

 eggs contain small concretions of the matter which forms 

 the shell, as occurs also in the egg of the common fowl ; 

 this has given rise to the idea of stones in the eggs. Both 



