nge in habits than that
which the members of the ostrich family must suffer, when cooped up in
small enclosures under a temperate climate, after freely roaming over
desert and tropical plains or entangled forests. Yet almost all the
kinds, even the mooruk (_Casuarius Bennettii_) from New Ireland, has
frequently produced young in the various European menageries. The
African ostrich, though perfectly healthy and living long in the South
of France, never lays more than from twelve to fifteen eggs, though in
its native country it lays from twenty-five to thirty.[373] Here we
have another instance of fertility impaired, but not lost, under
confinement, as with the flying squirrel, the hen-pheasant, and two
species of American pigeons.

Most Waders can be tamed, as the Rev. E. S. Dixon informs me, with
remarkable facility; but several of them are short-lived under
confinement, so that their sterility in this state is not surprising.
The cranes breed more readily than other genera: _Grus montigresia_ has
bred several times in Paris and in the Zoological Gardens, as has _G.
cinerea_ at the latter place, and _G. antigone_ at Calcutta. Of other
members of this great order, _Tetrapteryx paradisea_ has bred at
Knowsley, a Porphyrio in Sicily, and the _Gallinula chloropus_ in the
Zoological Gardens. On the other hand, several {157} birds belonging to
this order will not breed in their native country, Jamaica; and the
Psophia, though often kept by the Indians of Guiana about their houses,
"is seldom or never known to breed."[374]

No birds breed with such complete facility under confinement as the
members of the great Duck family; yet, considering their aquatic and
wandering habits, and the nature of their food, this could not have
been anticipated. Even some time ago above two dozen species had bred
in the Zoological Gardens; and M. Selys-Longchamps has recorded the
production of hybrids from forty-four different members of the family;
and to these Professor Newton has added a few more cases.[375] "There
is not," says Mr. Dixon,[376] "in the wide world, a goose which is not
in the strict sense of the word domesticable;" that is, capable of
breeding under confinement; but this statement is probably too bold.
The capacity to breed sometimes varies in individuals of the same
species; thus Audubon[