Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/130

102 the Cape Ostriches are the progeny of birds brought down from "The Interior"—the Kalahari Desert, Damaraland, and beyond. There is, I think, little doubt that all South African Ostriches are of one species; individual variations, accentuated by local differences of food and climate, are quite sufficient to account for all supposed varieties. I do not think that, on the evidence which I have been able to gather, there is any justification for maintaining that there is more than one species of Ostrich.

The Ostrich hen lays every other day, and the egg weighs about three pounds; it is a tasty and nutritious food however prepared, very rich, and excellent for making pastry and cakes. It is generally computed to be equal to two dozen fowls' eggs; but this must be on account of its superior richness, for, from personal experiment, the empty shell of a fairly large one exactly held the contents of eighteen fowls' eggs. It takes about forty minutes to boil an Ostrich egg hard. The period of incubation is about six weeks. The flesh of the chick, if well prepared, is excellent, but that of an old bird is tough and insipid. The Ostrich is, however, never killed for food, and is very rarely eaten, except by native servants.

The breast-bone of the Ostrich is of great thickness and strength, and of course keelless. Its lower edge has a hard pad, which must be useful to this heavy, long-legged bird when it bumps down to the recumbent position. It is obvious that the great weight and speed of the Ostrich, and its liability to collide against objects on the ground over which, when frightened, it makes its headlong indiscriminate way, would need that it be protected in front. Its thick convex sternum, almost devoid of flesh, is a most effective safeguard. As an instance of this, I have seen an Ostrich, at great speed, run against and snap a No. 6 fencing-wire, striking it with its breast; in the same way I have seen a sneeze-wood pole (a very tough wood used in wire-fencing), four inches in diameter at its thinnest end, broken just where it emerged from the ground; and a chick about eighteen months old run against a loose badly-built stone wall two feet in