Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/72

 62 S T--0 S T GOOO. If no person were designated on so many shells, the proceedings were at an end. The ostracized person might return at the end of his term of banishment, having then the full rights of citizenship, or his term might be shortened by a special vote of the people. The institution was intended as a precaution in view of the weakness of the central Government, which, having no standing army at its disposal, was liable to be disturbed or overturned by a sudden attack arranged by a powerful partisan. When party strife ran high, ostracism was frequently resorted to with the consent of the two parties, in order to test their strength; but when an ostracism had been arranged in 416 B.C. the parties subsequently compromised their dis pute and directed their votes against an insignificant person named Hyperbolus. After this the institution fell into disuse. According to Aristotle and Philochorus, the people were required every year in the first assembly of the sixth prytany to determine whether or not an ostracism should take place. The same institution is said to have been in use at Argos, Miletus, and Megara, and a similar one called petalismus was employed at Syracuse for a short time during the 5th century B.C. ; the latter was named from the olive leaves (-n-eraXa) used instead of oyster-shells. OSTRICH (Old English, Estridge; French, Autruche; Spanish, Avestruz; Latin, Avis strutkio). Among exotic birds there can be hardly one better known by report than the strange, majestic, and fleet-footed creature that &quot;scorneth the horse and his rider,&quot; or one that from the earliest times to the present has been oftener more or less fully described; and there must be few persons in any civilized country unacquainted with the appearance of this, the largest of living birds, whose size is not insig nificant in comparison even with the mightiest of the plumed giants that of old existed upon the earth, since an adult male will stand nearly 8 feet in height, and weigh 300 ft. As to the ways of the Ostrich in a state of nature, not much has been added of late years to the knowledge acquired and imparted by former travellers and natural ists, many of whom enjoyed opportunities that will never again occur of discovering its peculiarities, for even the most favourably-placed of their successors in recent years seem to content themselves with repeating the older observations, and to want either leisure or patience to make additions thereto, their personal acquaintance with the bird not amounting to more than such casual meetings with it as must inevitably fall to the lot of those who traverse its haunts. Thus there are still several dubious points in its natural history. On the other hand we unquestionably know far more than our predecessors respecting its geographical distribution, which has been traced with great minuteness in the Vogel Ost-Afrikas of Drs Finsch and Hartlaub, who have therein given (pp. 597-G07) the most comprehensive account of the bird that is to be found in the literature of ornithology. 1 As with most birds, the Ostrich is disappearing before the persecution of man, and this fact it is which gives the advantage to older travellers, for there are many districts, some of wide extent, known to have been frequented by the Ostrich within the present century, especially towards the extremities of its African range as on the borders of Egypt and the Cape Colony in which it no longer occurs, while in Asia there is evidence, more or less trustworthy, of its former existence in most parts of the south-western desert-tracts, in few of which it 1 A good summary of it is contained in the Ostriches and Ostrich farminyof Messrs De Mosenthal and Harting, from which the accom panying iigure is, with permission, taken. Von Heuglin, in his Ornitholoyie Nvrdost-Afrikvi s (pp. 925-93;)), lias given more parti cular details of the Ostrich s distribution in Africa. is now to be found. Xenophon s notice of its abundance in Assyria (Anabasis, i. 5) is well known. It is probable that it still lingers in the wastes of Kirwan in eastern Persia, whence examples may occasionally stray northward to those of Turkestan, 2 even near the Lower Oxus; but the assertion, often repeated, as to its former occurrence in Baloochistan or Sinclh, though not incredible, seems to rest on testimony as yet too slender for acceptance. Apparently the most northerly limit of the Ostrich s ordinary range at the present day cannot be further than that portion of the Syrian Desert lying directly to the eastward of Damascus; and, within the limits of what may be. called Palestine, Canon Tristram (Fauna and Flora of Palestine, p. 139) regards it as but a straggler from central Arabia, though we have little information as to its appearance and distribution in that country. Africa, however, is still, as in ancient days, the continent in which Ostrich. the Ostrich most flourishes, and from the confines of Barbary to those of the European settlements in the south it appears to inhabit every waste sufficiently exten sive to afford it the solitude it loves, and in many wide districts, where the influence of the markets of civilization is feebly felt, to be still almost as abundant as ever. Yet even there it has to contend with deadly foes in the many species of Carnivora which frequent the same tracts and prey upon its eggs and young the latter especially; and Lichtenstein long ago remarked that if it were not for its numerous enemies &quot;the multiplication of Ostriches would be quite unexampled.&quot; The account given of the habits of the species by this naturalist, who had excellent opportunities of observing it during his throe years 2 Drs Finsch and Hartlaub quote a passage from Remusat s Remarque.s sur Vcxtcnsion de I Empire Chinoise, stating that in about the seventh century of our era a live &quot; camel-bird &quot; was sent as a present with an embassy from Turkestan to China.