Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/131

Rh thickness, and break a gap through it;—all these without injury to the birds. The shape and strength of the breast-bone is also a protection to fighting cocks, for the most powerfully delivered kicks nearly always strike there, doing but little harm.

During the breeding season cocks often fight, but, unless they kick at each other through a wire-fence (when a broken leg frequently occurs), seldom with fatal results. The kick is forward with a downward tendency, and the long nail with which the larger toe is armed often cuts and tears severely. The force of the kick is great; a man goes down before it like a nine-pin. I have seen two cocks charge at each other, the larger of the two, at the first kick, being hurled several yards on to the broad of his back, while the kicker recoiled into a sitting posture; and I possessed a cock which kicked a hole through a sheet of corrugated iron, behind which a man had taken refuge. They can kick as high as a man's face; I have had a hole kicked through my riding breeches above the knee, and have known a boy kicked out of the saddle. Deaths from Ostrich kicks are by no means unknown. A really vicious cock seems to fear nothing, unless it be a dog that will attack him. The most striking instance of their fearlessness which I have heard was told me by a railway guard. The goods train he was in charge of was one day rattling at full speed down a steep gradient. A vicious cock saw it coming, and at once got on to the line between the rails, and advanced fearlessly to fight the monster. As the screeching engine approached, he rushed at it from straight in front, hissing angrily, and kicked. He was cut to pieces the next moment.

The old idea that an Ostrich can only leap over a very low fence, or across but the narrowest sluit (gully), is incorrect. It is true that perfectly tame birds, grazed within well-defined boundaries, may often be kept there with very insecure fences when the birds are thoroughly accustomed to recognize such as boundaries; but they will, when startled (never deliberately), sometimes go over a six-strand wire fence nearly five feet high, putting one foot on one of the middle wires, and striding over with the other. They will go over a stone wall in the same manner, if too high for them to step upon; and I have seen a