OCR Text |
Show BY PATH AND TKAIL. 215 mentioned above, says the ostrich lays only two eggs a year, and that the female plucks out the feathers of the male twice a year. The African ostrich may do all these things, but his descendants now in California and Ari zona have abandoned the habits of their primitive ances tors and have conformed to modern conditions. The os trich lays from twelve to sixteen eggs in a shallow hole, which the male bird has scooped out in a place conve nient for hatching. They are large eggs, and, for forty-two days, the birds cover them alternately, the male by night and the female by day. By a mysterious laF of adaptation, the color of the female, when brooding, is that of the desert sand, while that of her mate, which sets upon the eggs at night, is pitch black. This marvel ous provision of nature helps to conceal the birds dur ing the period of incubation from the eyes of prowling enemies. The chicks, when hatched, after a few days, are taken from the parents and confined in pens, where they are fed, and, until they can forage for themselves, raised by hand. If this were not done, many of the young birds would perish, for the parent ostriches seem to be indifferent to the fate of the little ones after they are hatched. It is to this apparent callousness of the ostrich the Patriarch Job alludes when he says, " She is hardened against her young ones as though they were not hers ; ' ' and the Prophet Jeremias, when he compares the ingratitude of Jerusalem to the indifference of the ostrich to her young: " The daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostrich in the desert. ' ' The young birds are delicate when they come from the shell and demand careful treatment until they are six or seven weeks old, when they become independent, take a firm hold on life and hustle for themselves. A two- |