142 
A COLONY IN THE MAKING 
CHAP. 
nowadays, nearly always hatched out in incubators, for, 
as an authority has said, “ the birds are too valuable 
to be wasting their time/’ 
The incubation of ostrich eggs is a very expert task. 
A level temperature of 98° or 99 0 is essential, and any 
great variation is generally fatal ; however, occasionally 
the eggs will hatch under the most unlikely conditions. 
The rearing, keeping, feeding, and selection of birds 
is an extremely fine art, and expert knowledge is 
eminently desirable. British East Africa has certainly 
not suffered from a plethora of experts in this line, and 
the comparatively slow progress made must in the main 
be attributed to the existing ignorance. When one 
considers the abstruseness of the questions connected 
with the effect of feeding on feathers, of plucking before 
the quill is ripe, of the effects of cold and rain, of the 
selection of birds and of the desirability of weeding out 
inferior specimens, one cannot help being astonished 
at the results that have been obtained with the limited 
knowledge at our disposal. It must not be thought 
that we are altogether without our experts, but rather 
that, although some breeders have knowledge, the 
majority have entered on the task light-heartedly and 
with a lack of knowledge which experience, however 
dearly bought, can never wholly rectify. Ostrich 
breeding seems one of those industries with regard to 
which the Agricultural Department might with advan¬ 
tage issue a short, concise and authoritative pamphlet. 
Ostriches are, generally speaking, healthy, though 
liable to the attacks of a worm in the intestines. 
Though this parasite occasionally causes death, far 
more damage is suffered from extraneous marauders, of 
whom lions and leopards come first, with native thieves 
a good second. The young ostrich is to the lion a 
