ON THE OSTRICHES. 221 
numerous villages and towns, caused the game to 
emigrate across the Great Orange River, where they 
still continue to recede as the white man advances. 
"The ostrich is now being domesticated by a 
nomadic people who are aware of the value 
of these birds. A full-grown male ostrich will 
yield about one pound of first-class feathers, of 
which it takes from 90 to 100 to the pound, the 
value of which, in Port Elizabeth or Cape Town 
would be from £42 to £50 per lb. The second 
class feathers, which are neither so long nor so broad, 
and have not got the spotless purity of the first quality 
realise from £20 to £30 per lb. The small black tips 
from the back and breast are exported chiefly for the 
regimental bonnets worn by highland regiments, the 
plumes of hearses, and various other purposes of a less 
grave character, and are sold at nominal prices ; of 
course, all these are taken from birds that have been 
destroyed by native and other hunters, and some idea 
may be formed of the extent of this pursuit, when I 
state, that some few years since, at the village of Hope 
Town, almost bordering on the present diamond fields, 
I saw offered for sale in one lot 8 cwt. of feathers that 
had just arrived from the interior, from Mr. Moffatt a 
trader, the brother-in-law of Dr. Livingstone ; and at 
the present day it is by no means uncommon to meet 
a wild untutored Kaffir or Hottentot boy with three or 
four first-class feathers stuck jauntily through his ears 
or fastened in his woolly head, of a length and beauty 
which would be calculated to excite the envy and 
admiration of many a European belle; but T am 
digressing. My reason for considering that ostrich 
farming would prove a success in this country is 
