Identifier: ourdomesticbirds00robi_0 (find matches)
Title: Our domestic birds; elementary lessons in aviculture
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Robinson, John H. (John Henry), 1863-1935
Subjects: Poultry Pigeons Cage birds
Publisher: Boston, New York (etc.) Ginn and company
Contributing Library: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library
Digitizing Sponsor: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library

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birds is very large in proportionto the rest of the skeleton, and has a deep, longitudinal keel inthe middle, is comparatively small in the ostrich and has nokeel at all. The ostrich, having no power of flight, is dependentfor safety upon its speed in running; so its legs are long andstrong, and the muscles which move them are very large. In-deed, there is very little meat on an ostrich except on the thighs.It can run much faster than a horse. Because its foot must beadapted to running at great speed, the ostrich has only two toes.Its neck is very long and slender, and its head is very small andflat. In such a head there is little room for brains. The ostrich 230 OSTRICHES 231 is a very stupid creature, but it does not, as is commonly sup-posed, hide its head in the sand and imagine that, not being ableto see its enemies, it cannot be seen by them. That is a mythapparently based upon the fact that, when in repose, an ostrichsometimes lies with its long neck stretched upon the ground.
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Fig. 179. Side view of male ostrich. (Photograph from the Bureau ofAnimal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture) Since the wings of the ostrich are useless for flight, the flightfeathers have lost the structure adapted to that purpose andhave developed into beautiful plumes. The tail feathers havealso undergone a similar change. These wing and tail feathersare the ostrich feathers of commerce. The neck and head ofthe ostrich are almost bare of feathers. The body is covered 232 OUR DOMESTIC BIRDS with feathers, but not as densely as in most birds. There arejust enough feathers on the body of an ostrich to protect theskin from exposure when they lie flat. The areas on the skinwhere there are no feathers are much larger than on other birds.The thighs of the ostrich are bare. The skin is in some varie-ties of a bluish-gray; in other varieties the bare parts are redand the skin of the body is yellow. The crop and the gizzard of the ostrich are not separated asin other birds, bu

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