Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ...for, when surprised, it will often take the very course that ensures its capture. It generally runs at both ends, if the hunters make a feint of blocking the windward entrance, the Ostrich, instead of making for the opposite end, will endeavour to rush past them, and is often captured or speared, as it never turns from the course it has once taken. In the open, however, as we have seen, it is sagacious as well as wary. The Arabs also consider it stupid, from the readiness with which it will swallow stones, nails, bullets, or any other hard and indigestible substance, and, in short, they give five proofs of its stupidity, which are enumerated by Bochart. Dr. Shaw adds, that he has seen an Ostrich swallow bullets hot from the mould, and I have, to my cost, known one swallow a pocket-knife and a buckle. It no doubt seizes hard substances to aid its gizzard in digesting its food, which consists, whenever it can obtain them, principally of date stones, the hardest of all vegetable substances. Yet it deserves, on the whole, the Arab reproach, "stupid as an ostrich," though the crowning accusation, that it hides its head in the sand, and fancies no one can see it, however popular and widespread, is an undeserved calumny. The plumage of the male Ostrich is a brilliant contrast of black and white, the precious plumes of the wings and tail being spotless white. The general colour of the female and young birds is dusky grey; but in the young the neck is bare, in the adult covered with short feathers. When captured young, the Ostrich is easily domesticated, and I have frequently seen them kept by Arabs, as free as the goats and camels, living with the other animals, and showing no disposition to escape. In some of the villages they are a...
