And warmeth them in the dust,
And forgetteth that the foot may crush them,
Or that the wild beast may break them?
She is hardened against her young ones
As though they were not hers:
Because God hath deprived her of wisdom,
Neither hath he imparted to her understanding.
This was more elegant than exact, for ostriches are exceedingly watchful and patient parents, as they have need to be, considering the perilous exposure of their nests on the ground, and the great number of enemies to which both eggs and young are exposed in the wilderness. Major S. Hamilton,[[110]] than whom there is no better authority, testifies to this. “The hen-bird,” he says, “sits on the eggs by day and the cock relieves her at night, so that the eggs are never left unguarded during incubation.” The chicks are able to take care of themselves after a day or two, and there is no more foundation in fact for the Biblical charge of cruelty than for that other Oriental fable that this bird hatches its eggs not by brooding but by the rays of warmth and light from her eyes. “Both birds are employed,” the fable reads, “for if the gaze is suspended for only one moment the eggs are addled, whereupon these bad ones are at once broken.” It is to this fiction that Southey refers in Thalaba, the Destroyer:
With such a look as fables say
The mother ostrich fixes on her eggs,