350 MR. J. H. WALTER ON A VISIT TO AN EGYPTIAN OSTRICH FARM. 
I. 
A VISIT TO AN EGYPTIAN OSTRICH FARM. 
By J. H. Walter. 
Read 27 th April, 1897. 
On Wednesday, March 17th, 1897, I went by train from Cairo to 
Matarieh, a short and hot half-hour’s journey, past the Khedive’s 
Summer Palace, to visit the large Ostrich farm belonging to a 
French limited company. 
The farm is enclosed by high mud walls, and the 650 pens into 
which the square is subdivided are also made of the same material. 
In each of the few first pens into which I was taken there were 
from twenty to twenty-four birds of the same age, beginning at 
two years old up to seven and eight. 
In one pen there was an old cock by himself, twenty years old, 
who, on being spoken to by the keeper, imitated in a niost 
ludicrous manner the dancing Dervishes. 
In the next pen were a cock and hen, each twenty-two years old, 
and the hen had just laid an egg. I was informed that there were 
about 150 laying hens, and that generally they laid an egg every 
other day, and that a four-year-old bird will, on an average, produce 
about thirty eggs yearly. 
The cock and hen sit alternately on from eight up to twenty 
eggs, for a period of six weeks, when the first chick appears ; but 
some time elapses before all the eggs are hatched out. 
I was much surprised at the very great difference in size of the 
chicks in one pen, which contained a cock and hen and ten young 
ones, some of which were more than twice the size of the others, 
and yet they were all out of the same nest. 
In the last pen 1 visited, the cock was sitting on four chicks 
which had only been hatched out that morning, and eight eggs ; 
