Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/197

 SACRAMENTO, SHASTA, LAKE TAHOE 161 of nine in the State, the value of whose combined annual yield is about $300,000. This sum, considerable as it may seem, is only a fourth of the total valuation of Arizona's feather- crop. At the third year, when the birds begin to mate, a pair is worth $600 to $800. In a season the placid brown female may lay as many as forty eggs, weighing about three pounds each. Her husband (the ostrich is monogamous) is black and ferocious, but helpful in the family menage. It is his long, strong toe-nail, useful as both an imple- ment and a weapon, which scoops the shallow nest in the sand. At night he relieves the mother in hatching. When six weeks have passed, an unerr- ing impulse leads the parents to crack the eggs' tough shell, which the chicks' bills are too weak to open. Of brains, ostriches have a traditional lack. Their keepers aver that they are incapable of distinguishing even those who serve their needs. Nevertheless they walk with hauteur, as if carry- ing upon their backs emblems of vanity gave them the right to exact homage. Therein their pose is not dissimilar to that of many who don the fine feathers after they are plucked. The camellia blooms in Sacramento during Feb- ruary and March as profligately as during the same months the pink and white petals blow in bonny Portugal. Linnaeus named the species for