Identifier: reptilesbirdspo00figu (find matches)
Title: Reptiles and birds. A popular account of the various orders; with a description of the habits and economy of the most interesting.
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Figuier, Louis, 1819-1894 Gillmore, Parker
Subjects: Birds Reptiles
Publisher: New York : D. Appleton and Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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food. The Romans, however,far from sharing the views of the Jewish legislator, considered it agreat culinary luxury. In the days of the Emperors they were con-sumed in considerable numbers; and we read that the luxuriousHeliogabalus carried his magnificence so far as to cause a dishcomposed of the brains of 600 ostriches to be served at a feast:this must have cost an almost incalculable sum. In formerdays it was a favourite dish with the tribes of Northern Africa. Atthe present date the Arabs content themselves with using its fat asan outward application in certain diseases, especially rheumaticaffections; and they derive from it, as they say, very beneficialeffects. The natives of Africa call the Ostrich the camel of the desert,just as the Latins denominated it Struthio cainelus. There is, in fact,some likeness between them. This resemblance consists in thelength of the neck and legs, in the form of the toes, and in thecallosities which are found on the lower stomach of both. In some
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.^^ XI.—The Ostrich. X 2 ^ THE-OSTRICH. : 35^ of their habits they also resemble each other; the Ostrich lies downin the same way as the camel, by first bending the knee, then leaningforward on the fleshy part of the sternum, and letting its hinderquarters sink down last of all. An entire volume might be filled with fables recorded of theOstrich. According to the Arabs, it is the progeny of a bird and acamel. One Arabian author states that it is aquatic ; another main-tains that it never drinks ; some that its principal food consists ofstones and bits of iron. Buffon himself asserts that it 77tight swallowred-hot iron, provided the quantity was small. Pliny and (followinghim) Pierre Belon, the naturahst of the Renaissance, state that whenthe Ostrich is pursued it fancies itself safe if it can place its headbehind a tree, believing that, as it cannot see its pursuers, they cannotsee it. That the Ostrich is extremely voracious is certain. Although thesenses of sight and hearing are so

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