As The Wagon Moves Along
Far To The Windward He Thinks It Is Intending To Circumvent Him,
So He Rushes Up A Mile Or So From The Leeward, And So Near To The Front Oxen
That One Sometimes Gets A Shot At The Silly Bird.
When he begins to run
all the game in sight follow his example.
I have seen this folly
taken advantage of when he was feeding quietly in a valley open at both ends.
A number of men would commence running, as if to cut off his retreat
from the end through which the wind came; and although he had
the whole country hundreds of miles before him by going to the other end,
on he madly rushed to get past the men, and so was speared. He never swerves
from the course he once adopts, but only increases his speed.
When the ostrich is feeding his pace is from twenty to twenty-two inches;
when walking, but not feeding, it is twenty-six inches;
and when terrified, as in the case noticed, it is from eleven and a half
to thirteen and even fourteen feet in length. Only in one case
was I at all satisfied of being able to count the rate of speed
by a stop-watch, and, if I am not mistaken, there were thirty in ten seconds;
generally one's eye can no more follow the legs than it can
the spokes of a carriage-wheel in rapid motion. If we take the above number,
and twelve feet stride as the average pace, we have a speed
of twenty-six miles an hour. It can not be very much above that,
and is therefore slower than a railway locomotive. They are sometimes shot
by the horseman making a cross cut to their undeviating course,
but few Englishmen ever succeed in killing them.
The ostrich begins to lay her eggs before she has fixed on a spot for a nest,
which is only a hollow a few inches deep in the sand, and about a yard
in diameter. Solitary eggs, named by the Bechuanas "lesetla", are thus found
lying forsaken all over the country, and become a prey to the jackal.
She seems averse to risking a spot for a nest, and often lays her eggs
in that of another ostrich, so that as many as forty-five have been found
in one nest. Some eggs contain small concretions of the matter
which forms the shell, as occurs also in the egg of the common fowl:
this has given rise to the idea of stones in the eggs. Both male and female
assist in the incubations; but the numbers of females being always greatest,
it is probable that cases occur in which the females have the entire charge.
Several eggs lie out of the nest, and are thought to be intended
as food for the first of the newly-hatched brood till the rest come out
and enable the whole to start in quest of food.
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