338 Birds. 
motion, it raises its short wings and holds them quiver- 
ing over its back, where they seem to serve as a kind of 
sail to gather the wind, and carry the bird onwards. 
The speed which it will thus attain is enormous. The 
swiftest greyhound cannot overtake it ; and indeed an 
Arab on his horse cannot hope to capture an ostrich 
without having recourse to stratagem. He dexterously 
throws a stick between its legs as it runs, and so tripping 
it up, is enabled to secure it. 
In its flight it spurns the pebbles behind it like shot 
against the pursuer. And this is not their only mode of 
annoyance. They have been known to attack men with 
their claws, with which they are able to strike with ter- 
rific force. The feathers of the back in the cock are coal 
black, in the hen only dusky, and so soft that they re- 
semble a kind of wool. The tail is thick, bushy, and 
round ; in the cock whitish, in the hen dusky, with white 
tops. These are the feathers so generally in requisition 
to decorate the head-dress of ladies and the helmets of 
warriors. 
The Ostrich swallows anything that presents itself, 
leather, glass, iron, bread, hair, &c, but the old notion 
that the Ostrich could digest metals is certainly in- 
correct. An Ostrich in the Zoological Gardens in the 
Regent's Park was killed by swallowing a lady's parasol. 
" O'er the wild waste the stupid Ostrich strays 
In devious search, to pick a scanty meal 
Whose fierce digestion gnaws the tempered steel." 
Mickle's LrsiAD. 
They are polygamous birds, one male being generally 
seen with two or three, and sometimes with five, females. 
The female Ostrich, after depositing her eggs in the 
sand, trusts them to be hatched by the heat of the 
climate: in the Book of Job there is a beautiful 
passage relating to this habit of the Ostrich, " which 
leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the 
dust; and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or 
that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened 
against her young ones, as though they were not hers. 
