The Rhea is peculiarly well adapted, in its size, colour, faculties, and habits, to the conditions of the level woodless country it inhabits; its lofty stature, which greatly exceeded that of any of its enemies before the appearance of the European mounted hunter, enables it to see far; its dim grey plumage, the colour of the haze, made it almost invisible to the eye at a distance, the long neck being so slender and the bulky body so nearly on a level with the tall grasses; while its speed exceeded that of all other animals inhabiting the same country. When watching the chase of Ostriches in the desert pampas, abounding in giant grasses, it struck me forcibly that this manner of hunting the bird on horseback had brought to light a fault in the Rhea--a point in which the correspondence between the animal and its environment is not perfect. The Rhea runs smoothly on the surface, and where the tall grass-tussocks are bound together, as is often the case, with slender twining plants, its legs occasionally get entangled, and the bird falls prostrate, and before it can struggle up again the hunter is close at hand and able to throw the _bolas_--the thong and balls, which, striking the bird with great force, wind about its neck, wings, and legs, and prevent its escape. When I questioned Ostrich-hunters as to this point they said that it was true that the Rhea often falls when running hotly pursued through long grass, and that the deer (_Cervus campestris_) never falls because it leaps over the large tussocks and all such obstructions. This small infirmity of the Rhea would not, however, have told very much against it if some moderation had been observed in hunting it, or if the Argentine Government had thought fit to protect it; but in La Plata, as in North America and South Africa, the licence to kill, which every one possesses, has been exercised with such zeal and fury that in a very few more years this noblest Avian type of the great bird-continent will be as unknown on the earth as the Moa and the _Æpyornis_. The Rhea lives in bands of from three or four to twenty or thirty individuals. Where they are not persecuted they show no fear of man, and come about the houses, and are as familiar and tame as domestic animals. Sometimes they become too familiar. At one _estancia_ I remember an old cock-bird that constantly came alone to feed near the gate, and that had so great an animosity against the human figure in petticoats, that the women of the house could not go out on foot or horseback without a man to defend them from its attacks. When the young are taken from the parent bird they become, as Azara truly says, "domestic from the first day," and will follow their owner about like a dog. It is this natural tameness, together with the majesty and quaint grace of its antique form, which makes the destruction of the Rhea so painful to think of.