“You have some of you seen a Robin stand up in the nest and shuffle her feet; when she does this she is turning her eggs, and the great Ostrich eggs are also turned every day. When domesticated, the mother Ostrich tends the eggs during the daylight hours, but the father takes her place in the later afternoon and remains until morning. This is evidently the result of the instinct for colour protection. The gray female shows the least plainly in daylight on the sand, while the black-and-white male can scarcely be seen at night. In fact, the domesticated bird is a creature of such regular habits that, according to reliable accounts, the male takes his place on the nest promptly at 5 P.M. and does not move until 9 A.M. This account does not say whether Mrs. O. lets her husband have an evening out once in a while to go to his club or lodge, but perhaps, as he has the rest of the year to himself, he does not expect a vacation in the important nesting season. But one thing is known to be true, that Ostriches are very devoted to each other and that the pairs when once mated remain together for life, an attribute of many birds, especially the very long-lived species. It is said that the wild Ostrich lives to be 100 years old. This may be true, for Ostriches who have been captives 40 years are still alive and healthy. In the deserts Ostriches are supposed to be able to go without water for days at a time, but in captivity they drink freely every day. This either proves that the habits alter very much, or else, that those who reported their wild life did not see correctly. “When the young Ostriches are hatched, they are about the size of a Plymouth Rock hen and are mottled and fuzzy. They grow very rapidly, so that at nine months old the bird will be nearly six feet tall, and after this the plumes are plucked at intervals of nine months; the feathers do not reach perfection, however, until the third year, and the birds do not reach maturity and mate until they are four years old,—and a fine male Ostrich of six or seven years of age is worth $1000 and will yield from $50 to $80 worth of feathers yearly. “When a little over a year old, the mottled plumage that the young birds wear slowly changes, the female becomes a dusky gray, and the male glossy black, though they both grow long white wing-plumes. By this you may learn that all the gayly coloured plumes that you see are dyed, and even those that remain black or white go through many processes of cleansing and curling before they are sold in the shops.” “How do they get the feathers off?” asked Sarah Barnes; “do they wait until they moult or pull ’em like they do geese?—only that hurts some ’cause the geese squawk something dreadful.”