Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/800

 heads; and the flowers of nearly all are of the portulaca type, some large, some small, some growing singly, others in clusters; they are of different colors—white, yellow, orange, red, pink, lilac," etc. They are very delicate and fragile, and fade as soon as they are gathered. The prickly pear is an introduced plant, but has become a nuisance, and brings great trouble upon the ostriches, which acquire a morbid taste for them, and ultimately succumb to the effect of the prickles that lodge in their throats and can not be got rid of.

The feathered and four-footed creatures of the country were all delightful, having the quaintest and most amusing ways, and were easily tamed; so that our settlers soon had a considerable menagerie around them. Their first acquisition was a secretary bird—Jacob—which, on first coming to live with them, reminded them "of a little old-fashioned man in a gray coat and tight black knee-breeches, with pale flesh-colored stockings clothing the thinnest and most angular of legs," the joints of which worked rather stiffly. "Not by any means a nice old man did Jacob resemble, but an old reprobate, with evil-looking eye, yellow-parchment complexion, bald head, hooked nose,



and fiendish grin; with his shoulders shrugged up, his hands tucked away under his coat-tails, and several pens stuck behind his ear." He was nevertheless very friendly and affectionate, and soon grew too tame and noisy. He would intrude into the house and persist in staying there, till, when all other efforts to drive him away had failed, a dried puff-adder's skin, of which he stood in mortal terror, was thrown at him, when he would run off and be gone for the day. The Cape Government protects these birds for their usefulness in destroying snakes. This one had a