46*6 
OSTRICH. 
tritious substances not occurring in sufficient abun- 
dance, it is obliged to have recourse to whatever 
offers to till up the void. 
We shall give the opinion of M. Perrault upon 
this curious subject, who, having found seventy 
doubloons in the stomach of one of these animals, 
observed, that most of them were worn down, and 
reduced to three-fourths of their prominence. He 
conceived that this was occasioned by their mutual 
friction and the comminution of pebbles, rather 
than by the action of an acid ; since some of these 
doubloons were much corroded on the convex sur- 
face, which was most exposed to the attrition, and 
yet not in the least affected on the concave side. 
He therefore concluded, that in these birds the 
solution of the food is not performed merely by 
subtle and penetrating juices, but is effected by the 
organic action of the stomach, which compresses its 
aliments, and agitates them incessantly with those 
hard bodies which they instinctively swallow. And 
because the contents of the stomach were tinged with 
green, he inferred that the copper was actually 
dissolved in it, not by any particular solvent, nor 
by the powers of digestion, but in a similar manner 
to what would take place if that metal were ground 
with some acid or saline liquor. He adds, that cop- 
per acts as a real poison in the stomach of the 
ostrich, and that all those who swallowed much of 
it soon died. 
When Dr. Shaw was abroad, he had several op- 
portunities of observing the manners of the ostrich. 
