But poor Jackie soon ceased from troubling—his end, as may well be imagined, being brought about by no other cause than his own moral obliquity. One day he wandered down to the river, where some Kaffir women were washing clothes; their children, a group of little animated nude bronzes, playing near them. One little fellow, who was eating, was of course instantly spied out by the covetous Jackie; who rushed to kick him, but in so doing tumbled down in the rocky bed of the river, and broke his own leg. The inevitable result followed, and Jackie, like all other broken-legged ostriches, had to be killed.
The hen ostrich lays every alternate day; and if, for each egg laid, one is taken from the nest, she will continue laying until she has produced from twenty to thirty. One, which belonged to T——, laid sixty eggs without intermission. If no eggs are taken away, the hen leaves off laying as soon as she has from fifteen to twenty; the latter being the greatest number that can be satisfactorily covered by the birds. The surplus eggs are placed in incubators. It is best not to give much artificial food to the birds while sitting; as, if overfed, they become restless, and are liable to desert the nest.
Every morning and evening the nest, or rather the shallow indentation in the sandy ground which forms this simplest of all "homes without hands," is left uncovered for a quarter of an hour, to allow the eggs to cool. The sight of nests thus apparently deserted has probably given rise to the erroneous idea that the ostrich leaves her eggs to hatch in the sun. The passage in the book of Job: "Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust," is also generally supposed to point to the same conclusion, though in reality there can be no doubt that the latter part of the sentence simply applies to the warming of the eggs by the heat of the bird's body as she sits over them in her dusty nest. Stupid though she is, she has more sense than to believe in the possibility of the sun hatching her eggs; she is indeed quite aware of the fact that, if allowed to blaze down on them with untempered heat, even during the short time she is off the nest, it would be injurious to them; and therefore, on a hot morning, she does not leave them without first placing on the top of each a good pinch of sand. This she does in order that the germ—which, whatever side of the egg is uppermost, always rises to the highest point—may be shaded and protected. Having thus set her nest in order, she walks off, to fortify herself with a good meal for the duties of the day.
And now comes the white-necked crow's chance; for which, ever since at earliest dawn he drew out his artful old head from under his wing, he has been patiently waiting. An ostrich-egg is to him the daintiest of all delicacies; but, nature not having bestowed on him a bill strong enough to break its hard shell, he is only able, by means of an ingenious device, to regale on the interior. He carefully watches till the parent's back is turned, and she is a good distance from the nest; then, flying up into the air, he drops a stone from a great height with a most accurate aim, and breaks an egg. He makes good use of his quarter of an hour; and he, no less than the hen ostrich, has had an ample meal by the time the latter returns to the nest. Perhaps to-morrow she will not wander so far away.
This crow, inveterate egg-stealer though he is, has a most respectable and clerical appearance; and with his neat suit of black and his little white tie he looks indeed "unco guid." The Boers—possibly on account of this pious exterior—have a legend to the effect that these birds are the "ravens" which fed Elijah. They say that after the birds had carried the meat, a little of the fat remained on their necks; in commemoration of which their descendants have this one conspicuous white patch on their otherwise black plumage. Numbers of tortoise-shells, some of immense size, are found about the veldt; which have been broken in the same manner as the ostrich-eggs, and their inmates devoured, by these crows; who thus reverse the process by which, some twenty-three centuries ago, the eagle, dropping his tortoise on what seemed to him a convenient stone for his purpose, smashed the bald head of poor Æschylus.
Among the denizens of the veldt the crows, unfortunately, are not the only appreciators of ostrich-eggs: and our worst enemies are the jackals. In lonely, far-off camps they plunder many promising nests; rolling the eggs away with their paws, sometimes to great distances. Occasionally, too, little chicks fall victims. We waged deadly war against the depredators; making liberal use of strychnine pills to "take us the foxes, the little foxes," which, finding no vines to spoil in the Karroo, were instead spoilers of ostrich nests. On a large vine-farm in the Atlas Mountains, where, after leaving the Cape, we spent some months, we were able to note the accuracy of this passage of Scripture—in which, I am told, the word rendered "foxes" ought in reality to have been translated "jackals." These animals did indeed work terrible havoc among the vines, eating incredible numbers of grapes; and T—— did much good by his introduction among them of the South African plan of poisoning, to which many succumbed. The pills, enclosed in pieces of fat, are dropped about the veldt; generally by a man on horseback, towing behind him a piece of very "high" meat, which, fastened by a riem (narrow strip of hide) to the horse's tail, drags along the ground. By-and-by the jackals, attracted by the odour of meat, come out; and, following along the route taken by the poisoner, find and eat the tempting pieces of fat. In the morning a good number are sure to be found dead; the survivors, apparently concluding that there is something very wrong about the place, take themselves off for a time to another neighbourhood; and the comparative silence which reigns at night is a pleasant change after the chorus of their querulous, uncanny voices.
The partiality of jackals and crows for ostrich-eggs, expensive though it is to us, reflects credit on their taste; for the eggs are certainly delicious. Those which, being useless for setting, found their way into my kitchen, were always most acceptable; and I have never had lighter cakes, nicer omelettes, custards, etc., than those made from them. And then they go so far! Two large square biscuit tins can be filled to overflowing with a noble batch of sponge finger biscuits, for which only one egg has been used. In spite of its large size—equalling twenty-four fowls' eggs—an ostrich-egg has no coarse flavour. It takes an hour to boil one hard; in which state it is a splendid article of food for baby ostriches.
Ostrich-eggs were much prized by the ancient Egyptians; and Gardiner Wilkinson tells us that they "were required for some ornamental or religious use, as with the modern Copts; and, with the plumes, formed part of the tribute imposed by the Egyptians on conquered countries."
Not long ago, T—— and I were much amused by the discovery, among copious notes in an old Bible dated 1770, of the following passage from a quaint old writer: "The Ostrich, which the Arabians call Naama, is a wild Bird of the Shape of a Goose, but much bigger than that; it is very high upon its Legs, and has a Neck of more than four or five Spans long: The Body is very gross, and in its Wings and Tail it has large Feathers black and white (like those of the Stork) and some grey; it cannot fly, but it runs very fast; in which it is much assisted by the Motion of its Wings and Tail: And when it runs, it wounds itself with the Spurs which it has on its Legs. It is bred in the dry Deserts, where there is no Water, and lays ten or twelve Eggs together in the Sand, some as large as a great Bowl, and some less. They say this Bird hath so little Memory that as soon as she hath made an End of laying her Eggs, she forgets the Place where she left them; so that when the Hen comes to a Place where there are Eggs, let them be her own or not, she sets abrood upon them, and hatches them; and as soon as the Chickens are hatched, they immediately run about the Country to look for Meat; and they are so nimble, when they are little, before their Feathers grow, that 'tis impossible to overtake them."
One is inclined to think that the old author, Marmol, from whose "History of Africa" the above passage is quoted, cannot have written from any very accurate acquaintance with the Dark Continent; at any rate, it is not likely that he ever saw an ostrich, or he would have known that it possesses no spurs.