RELATIVES OF THE BUSTARD. 
85 
In the Bustard genus we have the only European repre- 
sentatives of the Struthionkke, or Ostrich family, and the 
species known to us resemble, in their habits and appear- 
ance, those feathered giants of the stony karoos of South 
Africa and burning deserts of Arabia, and seemingly 
boundless plains of America, where the Cassowary, Emu 
and Ostrich stalk amid the trackless waste, and subsist upon 
the dry herbage which grows here and there in scanty 
tufts, or springs up more thickly around the brackish pool, 
or frequently empty water- course. 
The brown karoo wlierc the bleating cry 
Of the Springbok's fjiwn sounds plaintively, 
And the timorous Quagga's shrill whistling neigh, 
Is heard by the fountain at twilight grey. 
Where the Zebra wantonly tosses his mane 
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain ; 
And the fleet-footed Ostrich over the waste 
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, 
Hieing away to the home of her rest 
Where she and her mate have scoop'd their nest, 
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view 
In the pathless depths of the parched karoo. 
Such is the description which Pringle gives of one of 
the homes and haunts of the Camel-bird of the Arabs — 
the largest of the feathered game of the Hottentots and 
wild Bushmen, and swarthy sons of the eastern deserts, 
who hunt it chiefly for its light silky plumes, which are so 
much valued as ornaments in highly civilised communi- 
ties. And this is the near relative of our almost extinct 
Bustards, with the Mooruk of New Britain lately brought to 
this country, and that strange bird the wingless Apterix, 
called by the natives of New Zealand Kiwt\ and of a 
creature stranger yet in outer conformation, the extinct 
Dodo of New Holland. The Emu and the Cassowary we 
have already mentioned, and it now only requires the 
Nandu of South America, and the Patagonian Eheu to 
complete the family group. 
Stay : there is yet one more member to be introduced, 
The Kuffed or Macqueen Bustard {Otis Macqueenii), of 
which but a single specimen is recorded to have been shot 
in Britain. A fic^urc of it is given in the * Naturalist,' 
