beautiful quartz druse, which I had noticed in his drawing-room in 1872, but had not then the means of purchasing. The postmaster, Mr. Försterlein, also gave me a very interesting object, a talisman that had been given him by a Basuto doctor in acknowledgment of some service; it was a tablet of black wood about an inch and a half long, half as wide, and about a third of an inch thick, in which was set a piece of rock crystal. Some Basutos to whom Mr. Forsterlein had happened to show it were anxious to buy it, one of them offering two cows in exchange.
After leaving Philippolis, I was for a few days Mr. Schultze’s guest at his farm at Ottersport, where for the first time I had an opportunity of seeing tame ostriches. Now that the feather trade is on the decline, it is less expensive to keep the birds in this way than to hunt them wild; and they are bred in such numbers in South Africa, particularly in Cape Colony and the Free State, that in 1879 there were at least 100,000 of them. Directly it is out of the shell an ostrich chick is worth 5l, a half-grown bird varies from 20l. to 50l., and as much as 150l. has been paid for brooding-hens. Ostriches are generally bred in the localities where sheep and cattle-breeding has proved unremunerative.
The greatest difficulty that the ostrich farmer has to contend with is the parasite plague. From five to twenty-five per cent. of the birds each year die from being infested by tape-worms, which swarm in thousands and eat their way into the body; a great number of them are likewise attacked by palisade worms, occasionally a yard long, that gnaw into the muscles of the heart. Not unfrequently the
