294 The Animal-Lore of Shaksjoeare 9 s Time . 
breeding, and after her young ones are hatched, she leadeth them some-* 
times over-land, the space of a mile or better into the haven, where 
such as have leisure to take their pastime, chace them one by one with 
a boat and stones, to often diving, until through weariness, they are 
taken up at the boat’s side by hand, carried home, and kept tame 
with ducks. The eggs of divers of these fowls are good to be eaten.” 
{Survey of Cornwall, 1602, p. 109.) 
The Ostrich was considered by the ancients to be 
Ostrich P art ty bird and partly beast. As a compro¬ 
mise they gave it the name of camel-bird . Its 
range extends over the whole of Africa and even as far as 
the deserts of Arabia. John Leo, the African traveller, 
after a correct description of the ostrich, relates that—- 
“this fowle liveth in drie desarts and layeth to the number of ten 
or twelve egges in the sands, which being about the bignesse of great 
bullets weigh fifteen pounds a piece; but the ostrich is of so weak a 
memorie, that she presently forgetteth the place where her egges were 
laid, and afterwards the same or some other ostrich hen finding the 
said eggs by chance hatched and fostereth them as if they were 
certainely her owne. The chickens are no sooner crept out of the shell 
but they prowle up and downe the desarts for their food, and before 
theyr feathers be growne they are so swift that a man shall hardly 
overtake them. The ostrich is a silly and deafe creature, feeding upon 
any thing which it findeth, be it as hard and indigestable as yron.” 
{Purchas, vol. ii. p. 849.) 
Jack Cade thus threatens Iden : “ I’ll make thee eat 
iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great 
pin, ere thou and I part ” (2 Henry FI., iv. 10, 30). This 
fondness for metals has obtained for the bird the name of 
the “ iron eating-ostrich.” Lyly tells us that “ the estrich 
digesteth hard yron to preserve his health ” (Euphues, p. 
110). The statements as to the fancied property of the 
bird of digesting iron, assigned to it by popular credulity^ 
Sir Thomas elaborately refutes, in his work on popular 
errors. He mentions the arrival of two ostriches, brought 
from Tangier, and says, “ I sawe one in the latter end of 
King James his dayes, at Greenwich, when I was a school¬ 
boy” 
