i77;. fitting, nearly, fo well as the females o f other birds. The authors, who have, defcribed the young of the oftrich,. as being covered with fmall grey feathers, aie perfectly in the right. With a plumage of this colour, even their necks and thighs are clothed ; parts, which in the fullrgrown birds, are deftined to be naked, while the reft of their bodies are adorned with feathers. The moft beautiful and curled of thefe compofe the tail of the oftrich, and. confequently it is chiefly, for. the purpofe of adorning our heads with them, that we deprive this bird o f its life or freedom. In this colony, however, I did not fee oftrich. feathers made any other ufe of, than to brulli away the flies.; for which purpofe, whiiks were made of them of a.confiderable length as well as breadth, with which a flave or two were employed in driving away thefe animals from the table,, while the family were at their meals. The Hottentots, who eat all forts o f fleih, eat likewife that of the oftrich ; but the eggs I have feen ufed by the colonifts, and that, even at the Cape, for pancakes and aumelets. While we were travelling through the defert, we found it ann. fwer beft to fupple our throats with them juft before we took our chocolate or tea ; and likewife to clarify our coffee with them, or elfe to few them, for want o f pans, in our porridge-pot, having previoufly thrown into it a little fat ; a dilh I had learnt to prepare in Sweden by thè name of oeufs perdus. Oftriches eggs are eatable, indeed, in all thefe ways, but not equal to hen’s eggs. They are, as it were, o f a coarfer nature and thicker confiftence, and at the fame time C A P E OF G O O D H O P E . 123 time more filling and lufcioufe. One o f the largeft fhells '775^r o f the oftriches eggs, kept in the cabinet of the Royal Aca- demy, I found, on 'examination, 'to weigh eleven ounces, to be fix inches and a half in depth, and to hold five pints and a quarter liquid meafure. It is o f the fhape o f a common egg. I never found the weight o f the freih eggs exceed this in any extraordinary proportion; fo that when M. , d e B u f f o n (in page 426; 427) computes the weight o f one o f theie eggs at fifteen pounds, this bold affertion o f his feems to require to be mentioned, Only in order to be confuted.— ^ I have already; M Vol. I. page 130, related the method of hunting the oftriches in this country ; but that this bird contents itfelf barely with hiding its head, when it finds it cannot make its efcape, is a matter which I do not remember ever to have heard mentioned at the Cape ; but even were it a fadt, ftill P l i n y ’s explication o f it is not more abfurd than M. d e B u f f o n ’s manner of accounting for it, 1. c. page 448. Children, indeed, who play at hide and feek, are apt to imagine that they aré concealed, when they cover their heads, fo that they themfelves cannot fee. I have likewife frequently obferved turkey-poults merely hide their heads, fo as not to be able to fee any thing, when they were warned by their mother’s cries o f the hawk’s approach. How then can one expedt a gfeater degree of confideration in a bird, in other refpeéts very ftupid, and which is in danger of its life ? M. d e B u f f o n , page 448, calls the ikin of this creature very thick; but in this reipedt it is but equal at the beft to goat’s or calf’s-ikin ; fo that how far the Arabians can ufe R 2 it
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