168 
THE SOCIETY'S OSTRICHES. 
If they remain free from attack for the first year, they, 
as far as our experience has gone, escape altogether. An 
examination of several after death showed the feet and 
legs to be extensively congested, but all the vital organs 
were quite healthy. 
A second attempt was made with the incubator during 
the following winter, when the hen, in a most unaccount- 
able manner, began laying. To have left the bird to hatch 
these eggs herself could only have been useless in result, 
as the cold and wet days at that season would have at once 
destroyed the delicate young chicks, which are so extremely 
sensitive to these causes, and no other alternative was 
therefore open for dealing with the eggs. The process at 
first promised excellent results, and great hopes were 
entertained of a large increase to the flock, but once more 
disappointment ensued. Of the chicks safely hatched all 
fell victims to the disease before referred to, until at 
length, after six or eight months, only two out of all the 
flock remained alive, and these soon after died. 
The next eggs were laid in the following summer, and 
were left entirely to the parent birds to hatch, but some 
of the chicks having died soon after birth from the effects 
of a heavy thunderstorm, and the rest being in danger 
from other causes — chief among which was that arising 
from the attacks of the cock birds, who would speedily 
have killed them all — it was deemed advisable to place 
them in charge of a keeper. This was accordingly done, 
and the final result of this hatching was six birds, four of 
which are healthy and two diseased. These are now 
nearly old enough for breeding, and the former, or healthy 
ones, show signs of a desire to pair. 
This lot of birds possess the immense advantage of being 
perfectly tame and easily driven or enticed wherever 
desired, which the older birds can not be without consider- 
