Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/804

784 thighs, head, and neck, are much handsomer than the Cape birds; and their feathers, being larger and softer and having longer filaments, command higher prices.

Ostriches are extremely nervous and subject to panics, under the influence of which they will run immoderately, often till they are lost. At plucking-time they are driven in from all the corners of the farm whither they have wandered, and collected first in a large inclosure, then in a small one, the plucking-kraal, in which they are crowded together so closely that the most savage bird has no room to make himself disagreeable. Besides the gate through which the ostriches are driven into the kraal, there is an outlet at the opposite end, through the "plucking-box." This is a firm wooden box, in which, though there is just room for an ostrich to stand, he can not turn round or kick. At each end is a stout door, one of which opens inside, the other outside, the kraal. Each bird in succession is dragged up to the first door, and, after more or less of a scuffle, is pushed in and the door slammed behind him. Then the two operators, standing one on each side of the box, have him completely in their power; and, with a few rapid snips of the shears, his wings are denuded of their long white plumes. These, to prevent their tips being spoiled, are always cut before the quills are ripe. The stumps of the latter are allowed to remain some two or three months longer, until they are so ripe that they can be pulled out—generally by the teeth of the Kaffirs—without hurting the bird. It is necessary to pull them; for the feathers which, by their weight would have caused the stumps to fall out naturally at the right time, are gone. Some farmers, anxious to hurry on the next crop of feathers, are cruel enough to draw the stumps before they are ripe: but Nature, as usual, resents the interference with her laws, and the feathers of the birds which have been thus treated soon deteriorate.

After a good rain, ostriches soon begin to make nests. The males become very savage, and their note of defiance—brooming as it is called by the Dutch—is heard in all directions. The bird inflates his neck in a cobra-like fashion, and gives utterance to three deep roars, the first two short and staccato, and the third very prolonged, the whole being described as identical in sound with the roar of the lion. When the birds are savage, or quei, as the Dutch call it, they become very aggressive, and it is impossible to walk about the camps unless armed with a weapon of defense called a tackey. This is a long and stout branch of mimosa, with the thorns all left on at the end. "It seems but a feeble protection against a foe who, with one stroke of his immensely powerful leg, can easily kill a man; the kick, no less violent than that of a horse, being rendered infinitely more dangerous by the