CHAPTER X. 
THE OSTRICH. 
Gayest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wines and feathers unto the ostrich? 
Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, 
And forgetteth that the foot may crusls them, or that the wild beast may break them. 
She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers: her labour is in vain without freer. 
Beenuse God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding, 
What time she lifteth op herself an high, she scorneth the horse and his rider. 
Famous from the most remote antiquity, and constituting in the chain of being, the link between the Aves and the 
Mammatia, the Ostrich —largest and least bird-like of all the feathered race —is distributed over the whole of Africa, from 
Egypt and Barbary to the Cape; wandering also through those portions of Asia which border upon that vast continent, and 
setting up the staff of habitual sojourn in the sandy deserts of Arabia. Herding in troops which consist of thirty, forty, or 
more individuals of both sexes, these giant birds inhabit the most sterile and desolate regions, commonly associating with the 
Quagga, or with Burchell’s Zebra, their fellow tenants of the waste, for whose society it has already been remarked that they 
eyince a singular predilection;—and uniformly frequenting the widest and most naked plains, where their towering heads are so 
far elevated aboye their four-footed companions, and above the surrounding country, as to admit of their discovering objects at 
a distance which renders them secure against the stealthy invasion of man, their hereditary foe. Prudent and circumspect, the 
Ostrich—in Southern Africa at least—hbetrays none of that stupidity with which the species has been taxed by Naturalists ; 
and, if decreed to remain upon the earth by being denied the faculty which is the eminent prerogative of its clags—it has 
nevertheless received in compensation, a fleetness of foot, imparting that force and rapidity in the race, which enables it to 
outstrip with ease, every other animal in the creation. 
Aristotle pronounced the Ostrich to be of an equivocal nature, part bird, part quadruped, and, as well in external cha- 
racter as in internal structure, it undoubtedly presents numerous peculiarities by which it closely approximates to the beasts. 
Viewed as a member of the feathered creation, its dimensions are perfectly astounding —the cock not unfrequently attaming the 
enormons height of nine feet at the crown of the head, and actually weighing from one to three hundred pounds—whilst the 
muscular thigh alone, is superior in point of size to the largest leg of mutton. Unlike other birds, its tongue is short, and 
moulded in the form of a horse-shoe; the sternum, instead of being shaped in the usual manner like the keel of a vessel, rather 
resembling a broad cuirass. This callous breast-place, covered with an extremely thick skin, forms no contemptible defensive ar- 
mour, and is particularly fayorable to the motions of the bird, in all its up-risings and down-sittings, these manceuvres being 
performed much after the fashion of the dromedary, to which animal, the length of the bird's legs, as well as of its neck, com- 
bined with its singular habits, have cansed it to be aptly compared. The Strowthos of the Greeks, as well as the Struthio 
Camelus of the Latins, have both heen derived from this analogy of feature, which has even given rise amongst the people 
of Persia and Arabia, to a vulgar belief that the Shutwr-moorg* is produced by the union of a camel with a bird! 
So easily is the Ostrich satisfied in regard to water, that it is constantly to be found in arid and desolate tracts, which 
have been long abandoned both by antelopes and beasts of prey—a circumstance which has given rise to another absurd tra- 
dition amongst the Arabs and Hottentots that it never drinks at all, but even avoids those places in which water is to be found. 
Inhabiting parched and burning climes, which are seldom refreshed by rain—vast deserts of naked sand, equal in extent to the 
eutire dominions of Kuropean Sovereigns, but affording neither “green herb nor limpid stream™—this bird, like its prototype 
the camel, may, in its wild state, frequently pass several days without drinking; yet in refutation of the charge of hydrophobia, 
it is well known to have no difficulty, when domesticated, in disposing of a gallon of liquid daily. Naturally herbivorous, it 
feeds principally on the tops of heather, and of various shrubby plants, which even the most barren parts of Africa produce 
in sufficient abundance, but which would not appear to contain more moisture than an old worn out broom. So voracious is 
this bird, however, and so obtuse are its senses of taste and smell, that, although vegetable matter constitutes the basis of its 
diet, it will devour animal and mineral substances indiscriminately, until its enormous stomach can absolutely hold no more. 
Without any choice, and merely, as it were, to serve for ballast, it swallows in succession, stones, wood, glass, iron, copper, 
gold, leather, quick-lime, or any substance in fact which comes in its way, however hard, indigestible, and usually deleterious 
it may be. Hence the showman's story that the running ostrich feeds entirely upon iron; for pieces of this metal have ac- 
tually been found in its stomach, greatly worn down by trituration with other hard bodies, and even eaten into, in parts, by 
the gastric fluid. Nevertheless the digestive powers are confined to matter of an alimentary character; nails not unfrequently 
* Anglicé, The Camel-Bird. 
