V 
HABITS OF THE OSTRICH 
95 
over the country. They lie either scattered and single, in which 
case they are never hatched, and are called by the Spaniards 
huachos ; or they are collected together into a shallow ex¬ 
cavation, which forms the nest. Out of the four nests which I 
saw, three contained twenty-two eggs each, and the fourth 
twenty-seven. In one day’s hunting on horseback sixty-four 
eggs were found ; forty-four of these were in two nests, and 
the remaining twenty, scattered huachos. The Gauchos 
unanimously affirm, and there is no reason to doubt their 
statement, that the male bird alone hatches the eggs, and for 
some time afterwards accompanies the young. The cock when 
on the nest lies very close ; I have myself almost ridden over 
one. It is asserted that at such times they are occasionally 
fierce, and even dangerous, and that they have been known to 
attack a man on horseback, trying to kick and leap on him. 
My informer pointed out to me an old man, whom he had 
seen much terrified by one chasing him. I observe in 
Burchell’s Travels in South Africa that he remarks, 
“ Having killed a male ostrich, and the feathers being dirty, 
it was said by the Hottentots to be a nest bird.” I under¬ 
stand that the male emu in the Zoological Gardens takes 
charge of the nest: this habit, therefore, is common to the 
family. 
The Gauchos unanimously affirm that several females lay 
in one nest. I have been positively told that four or five hen 
birds have been watched to go in the middle of the dav, one 
after the other, to the same nest. I may add, also, that it is 
believed in Africa that two or more females lay in one nest. 1 
Although this habit at first appears very strange, I think the 
cause may be explained in a simple manner. The number of 
eggs in the nest varies from twenty to forty, and even to 
fifty ; and according to Azara, sometimes to seventy or eighty. 
Now although it is most probable, from the number of eggs 
found in one district being so extraordinarily great in proportion 
to the parent birds, and likewise from the state of the ovarium 
of the hen, that she may in the course of the season lay a large 
number, yet the time required must be very long. Azara 
states, 2 that a female in a state of domestication laid seventeen 
1 Burchell’s Travels , vol. i. p. 28c. 
2 Azara, vol. iv. p. 173. 
