Till that intense affection
Kindle its light of life.
Hence, as Burnaby tells us, ostrich eggs were hung in some Mohammedan mosques as a reminder that “God will break evil-doers as the ostrich her worthless eggs.” Professor E. A. Grosvenor notes in his elaborate volumes on Constantinople, that in the turbeh of Eyouk, the holiest building and shrine in the Ottoman world, are suspended “olive lamps and ostrich eggs, the latter significant of patience and faith.” Their meanings or at any rate the interpretations vary locally, but the shells themselves are favorite mosque ornaments all over Islam, and an extensive trans-Saharan caravan-trade in them still exists. Ostrich eggs as well as feathers were imported into ancient Egypt and Phœnicia from the Land of Punt (Somaliland) and their shells have been recovered from early tombs, or sometimes clay models of them, as at Hu, where Petrie found an example decorated with an imitation of the network of cords by which it could be carried about, just as is done to this day by the Central-African negroes, who utilize these shells as water-bottles, and carry a bundle of them in a netting bag. Other examples were painted; and Wilkinson surmises that these were suspended in the temples of the ancient Egyptians as they now are in those of the Copts. The Punic tombs about Carthage, and those of Mycenae, in Greece, have yielded painted shells of these eggs; and five were exhumed from an Etruscan tomb, ornamented with bands of fantastic figures of animals either engraved or painted on the shell, the incised lines filled with gold; what purpose they served, or whether any religious significance was attached to them, is not known. Eggs are still to be found in many Spanish churches hanging near the Altar: they are usually goose-eggs, but may be a reflection of the former Moorish liking for those of the ostrich in their houses of worship.
To return for a moment to the notion that the ostrich breaks any eggs that become addled (by the way, how could the bird know which were “gone bad”?), let me add a preposterous variation of this, quoted from a German source by Goldsmith[[32]] in relation to the rhea, the South American cousin of the ostrich—all, of course, arrant nonsense:
The male compels twenty or more females to lay their eggs in one nest; he then, when they have done laying, chases them away and places himself upon the eggs; however, he takes the singular precaution of laying two of the number aside, which he does not sit upon. When the young one comes forth these two eggs are addled; which the male having foreseen, breaks one and then the other, upon which multitudes of flies are found to settle; and these supply the young brood with a sufficiency of provision till they are able to shift for themselves.
Another popular saying is: “I have the digestion of an ostrich!”
What does this mean? Ancient books went so far as to say that ostriches subsisted on iron alone, although they did not take the trouble to explain where in the desert they could obtain this vigorous diet. A picture in one of the Beast Books gives a recognizable sketch of the bird with a great key in its bill and near by a horseshoe for a second course. In heraldry, which is a museum of antique notions, the ostrich, when used as a bearing, is always depicted as holding in its mouth a Passion-nail (emblem of the Church militant), or a horseshoe (reminder of knightly Prowess on horseback), or a key (signifying religious and temporal power).
An amusing passage in Sir Thomas Browne’s famous book, Common and Vulgar Errors[[33]]—which is a queer combination of sagacity, ignorance, superstition and credulity—is his solemn argument against the belief prevalent in his day (1605–82) that ostriches ate iron; but he quotes his predecessors from Aristotle down to show how many philosophers have given it credence without proof. The great misfortune of medieval thinkers appears to have been that they were bound hand and foot to the dead knowledge contained in ancient Greek and Latin books—a sort of mental mortmain that blocked any progress in science. They made of Aristotle, especially, a sort of sacred fetish, whose statements and conclusions must not be “checked” by any fresh observation or experiment. Browne was one of the first to exhibit a little independence of judgment, and to suspect that possibly, as Lowell puts it, “they didn’t know everything down in Judee.”
“As for Pliny,” Sir Thomas informs us, “he saith plainly that the ostrich concocteth whatever it eateth. Now the Doctor acknowledgeth it eats iron: ergo, according to Pliny it concocts iron. Africandus tells us that it devours iron. Farnelius is so far from extenuating the matter that he plainly confirms it, and shows that this concoction is performed by the nature of its whole essence. As for Riolanus, his denial without ground we regard not. Albertus speaks not of iron but of stones which it swallows and excludes again without nutriment.”
This is an excellent example of the way those old fellows considered a matter of fact as if it were one of opinion—as if the belief or non-belief of a bunch of ancients, who knew little or nothing of the subject, made a thing so or not so. Sir Thomas seems to have been struggling out of this fog of metaphysics and shyly squinting at the facts of nature; yet it is hard to follow his logic to the conclusion that the allegation of iron-eating and “concocting” (by which I suppose digestion is meant) is not true, but he was right. The poets, however, clung to the story. John Skelton (1460–1529) in his long poem Phyllip Sparrow writes of