4 o 
NATURE NOTES. 
the female is generally very coy and particular in accepting a 
suitor. I have heard of as much as ^"506 being given for one 
pair of birds ; £200 and ^”300 are not at all uncommon prices. 
A few hours after the disease had attacked them, they would be 
no more worth than their feathers. 
Dick, the Zulu attendant, would pluck their carcases till 
they were as naked as a Christmas turkey, and bury them at 
once, for fear of the infection spreading. In spite of this 
depressing occupation, he was always ready for a grin some six 
inches wide, evoked on the smallest provocation, at the most 
microscopic of jokes. 
Gathering the feathers is not in any way a painful operation 
for the birds, as they are not plucked out, but cut— the stumps 
being pulled out when the bird would be naturally moulting. It 
would not do to wait until the moulting time to gather in the 
feathers, as they are then past their full beauty. 
Each bird has a distinguishing name of its own. I was 
amused to hear the farmer discussing with his Zulu factotum 
as to whether “ Mrs. Langtry ” were ripe, or whether “ Mr. 
Gladstone ” were fit for gathering. The birds are coaxed into 
a kind of wooden hutch with no top to it, and sufficiently small 
to prevent the legs having full play. They can then be ap- 
proached with ease, and the feathers are safely cut off. 
From all that I saw I feel satisfied that ostrich-farming is 
not cruel. The birds owe a happy and pleasant existence to the 
fact that their feathers have a commercial value. They are 
never short of fodder or water, as they too often are in their 
natural state. They are protected from wild beasts, and their 
great value secures them from rough handling by their owners, 
for the better they are kept, the finer the crop of feathers. For 
all these advantages the only return they have to make, is to 
lose what nature would every year take from them at the moult. 
W. Tyndale. 
Since members of the Selbome Society are often questioned 
as to the humanity of ostrich-farming, it may be worth while 
to quote a published letter of Mr. Thomas Distin’s to Sir 
Charles Mills, K.C.M.G., in 1886:— 
“ Dear Sir Charles, — You enquire if ostriches suffer any 
pain in the process of plucking their feathers. Let me assure 
you that such is not the case. The ostriches are first driven 
into a small enclosure, caught, and put in a wooden frame. 
The feathers are then cut with a pair of scissors, leaving about 
an inch of stump. The bird is then released, and runs for 
about six weeks until the stumps are dried up, when they are 
drawn. If the feathers were pulled at first instead of being cut, 
then of course the bird would suffer much pain, and the small 
fibres or nerves attached to the stump of the feather would be 
injured and the bird would no longer produce good feathers, 
