IN THE ZAMBESI VALLEY. 
293 
according to their comparative abundance or scarcity. Seventy to 
ninety feathers go to the pound, and those plucked from the living 
bird are accounted of the greatest value. 
The flesh of the young bird is described as not unpalatable ; that 
of the adult is coarse and rank. Yet it was considered a honne houche 
by the ancient Romans. According to Vopiscus, the pseudo Emperor 
Firmus, the Moor, equally celebrated for his exploits at the anvil and 
the trencher, devoured an entire ostrich at one sitting. Apicius has 
put on record a recipe for the best sauce to be served up with the 
African bird. The brains were considered a peculiarly precious dish, 
and at a single feast the Emperor Heliogabalus was served with those 
of six hundred slaughtered ostriches. But, as Dr. Doran observes, had 
he confined himself to becaficoes, instead of acquiring indigestion on 
ostrich brains and flamingoes, his name would have held a more 
respectable place in the annals of gastronomy. 
With one more reminiscence, we take leave of the ostrich. When 
Sir Epicure Mammon, in Ben Jonson's Alchemist, is expatiating on 
the enjoyments his expected mastery of the great alchemic secret of 
gold-making will place at his command, he bethinks himself of certain 
attendants who shall fan him 
" With two ostrich tails 
A-piece, made in a plume to gather wind." 
VALLEY OF THE ZAMBESI. 
Passing out of the Kalahari Desert into the rich valley of the 
Zambesi, we find it inhabited by numbers of birds, who find there a 
pleasant habitat. In the river-banks the bee-eater makes his home. 
He is of a friendly and gregarious disposition; and the face of the sand- 
cliff" is perforated with hundreds of holes leading to their nests, each 
about twelve inches apart from the other. A similar habitat is sought 
by the speckled kingfisher, which may be seen on busy wing along 
with a most beautiful little blue-and-orange kingfisher, — the two ever 
and anon darting, arrow-like, into the water after their prey. Dr. 
Livingstone speaks of upwards of thirty species on the river itself ; the 
commonest being the This religiosa, which, as on the Nile, comes down 
