toes; and the wings are so small
that the animal is always restricted to the surface of the ground,
where, however, it can move with remarkable swiftness. The valuable
feathers grow on the wings. The ostrich attains a height of eight feet,
and when full grown may weigh as much as 165 pounds.

Ostriches live in small flocks of only five or six birds. They feed in
the morning, chiefly on plants, but they also devour small animals and
reptiles. By midday their stomachs are full, and they rest or play,
leaping in circles over the sand, regardless of the blazing sun or the
heated ground. Then they drink and wander about eating in the afternoon.
In the evening they seek their roosting-places.

Sight is the ostrich's acutest sense, but its scent and hearing are also
sharp. When it is pursued, it darts off with fluttering wings, taking
steps ten or twelve feet long. It is always on the look-out for danger,
and the zebra likes to keep near it to avail itself of the bird's
watchfulness. In North Africa the Arabs hunt the ostrich on swift horses
or running dromedaries. Two or three horsemen follow a male, which after
an hour's course is tired out, and gradually relaxes its pace. The
horses also are tired after such a chase, but one of the riders urges on
his steed to a last spurt, rushes past the ostrich, and hits it on the
head so that it falls to the ground. The bird is then skinned, the skin
being turned inside out so as to form a bag for the feathers. The
feathers of the wild ostrich are much finer and more valuable than those
of the tame. A full-grown ostrich has only fourteen of the largest white
feathers.

The hens lay their eggs in a shallow hollow in loamy or sandy soil, and
it is the male bird which sits on the eggs. In the daytime the nest may
be left for hours, but then the ostriches cover the eggs with sand. The
young ones leave their shells after six weeks and go out into the
desert. They are already as large as fowls, but then an ostrich egg
weighs as much as twenty-four hen's eggs, and measures six inches along
its greatest diameter.

The ostrich is remarkably greedy, and turns away from nothing. The great
zoologist, Brehm, who had tame ostriches under his care, reports that
they ate rats and chickens and swallowed small stones and potsherds, and
once or twice his bunch of keys disappeared down the stomach of an
ostrich. In one ostrich's stomach was found nine pounds of
"ballast"--stones, rags, buttons, bits o