MAKING HASTE TO BE RICH.

THE marquis of Chandos embarked 300,000l. in the South Sea scheme. His stock reached a premium of 300,000l. He was advised to sell, but refused to do so, expecting a profit of half a million. The crash came, and he lost all! Samuel Chandler, the eminent Nonconformist divine, also risked his whole fortune in the bubble. He lost it, and was obliged to serve in a bookseller's shop for two or three years afterwards. With what force he must subsequently have preached on the text, "They that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare!"

VINCENT DE PAUL.

Ir is recorded of Vincent de Paul, that in his extreme old age, having been forced, much against his will, to accept the gift of a coach, that his benevolent labours might be less crippled by the burden of his infirmities, he could only be induced to use it by employing it to convey, as he went along, the sick to the hospital, and the old and the poor to their place of abode. It is in harmony with these incidents that we learn that before each of his repasts, he lifted up his voice to heaven, to implore a blessing on the honest peasants, whose labour had produced the bread he was about to eat.

THE OSTRICH AND ITS ALLIED SPECIES. No. IV.

IN South Africa, the ostrich is often hunted down by a number of horsemen stationed in different parts of the plain, who meet it at every turn; but sometimes it has been known to turn upon its foes with great fury. The great power of its limbs enables it to strike with tremendous force; and the traveller, Dr. Shaw, notices the melancholy case of a man who was severely wounded by a stroke from the large hoof-like claw of one of these birds, which attacked him. The same writer (Travels in Arabia) describes the ferocity which the tame ostrich often displays towards strangers, especially if ill-dressed. "Notwithstanding (he says) these birds appeared tame and tractable to such persons of the family as were more known and familiar to them, yet they were very often fierce

and rude to strangers, especially the poorer sort, whom they would not only endeavour to push down, by running furiously upon them, but would not cease to peck at them violently with their bills, and strike at them with their feet, whereby they were frequently very mischievous." He adds, that while they are engaged in these assaults, they utter a fierce, angry, hissing noise, with their throats inflated and their mouths open; at other times, they utter a chuckling or cackling noise; but during the silent hours of the night, they often made a very doleful and hideous noise, sometimes resembling the roaring of the lion-sometimes the hoarse voice of the bull or ox. Frequently, too, they groan as if in the greatest agonies: hence the expression of the prophet Micah, i. 8-"I will make a mourning as the ostrich." Here we may observe, that the term bathhayyanah" (the daughter of wailing), is rendered "owls" in this passage, and in others of the common translation: but it is, we believe, generally acknowledged that the moaning ostrich is really the bird alluded to.-See Job xxx. 29, and Isa. xiii. 21.

It appears that Dr. Shaw often saw the ostrich tame in North Africa, and other travellers record instances of the same description which they elsewhere met with. At the factory of Podor, on the south bank of the Niger, Adamson saw two tame ostriches, which were so familiar as to allow themselves to be mounted. On the back of the largest, two little negroes seated themselves, when, feeling their weight, he began to set off at a quick pace, carrying them several times round the village; nor could the bird be stopped, except by obstructing his passage. Interested by this sight, and desirous to try their strength, Adamson caused a full-grown man to mount the smallest, and two others the largest ; nor did the burden seem disproportioned to their strength. At first, they set off at a moderate pace; but when a little excited by the exercise, they expanded their wings, as if to catch the wind, and moved along with astonishing fleetness. Every one, he observes, must have seen a partridge run, and therefore must know that a man is not able to keep up with it,hence it is easy to imagine how rapid it would be if elevated on longer limbs, and taking a series of enormous strides; just so it is with the powerful ostrich, with which the fleetest horse cannot keep up in the course, though, perhaps, the latter

the young birds when first excluded, and as yet unable to digest the hard and often acrid vegetable food on which the parents subsist. This is highly probable, inasmuch as in some localities no food is to be obtained excepting at a considerable distance from the nest, and consequently out of the reach of the young until they have gained a tolerable degree of strength

nest.

It is a remarkable fact, that in South Africa, on the vast plains north of the Gariep, where the ostrich is very common, it is generally to be seen intermingled with herds of zebras or darews (Burchell's zebia); and Xenophon observed the same thing with regard to the ostrich and wild ass of the Deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. This predilection of the ostrich for the company of these quadrupeds is very singular;-many travellers have noticed it, and have assured us that where herds of zebras abound, in the midst of them may be seen the towering ostrich, accompanying them in their movements. From this companionship the bird, perhaps, derives an instinctive feeling of safety. Some persons have regarded the ostrich as not polygamous; but this is evidently a mistake-at all events it is so as a general rule, and several females combine to lay their eggs in the same The nest is a mere excavation in the ground, with the sand heaped up around it, so as to form a sort of circular bank or elevated margin. Each female lays about ten or twelve eggs; at least, this is the number assigned by Le Vaillant, who, on one occasion, met with a nest containing thirty-eight eggs, with thirteen others lying around it. This nest he watched, and saw during the day four females succeessively sit upon them; towards the close of the evening, the male bird took his turn of incubation. That the male should occupy the place of the females during the night, is the more necessary, as it is at this time that the smaller beasts of prey-wild cats, jackals, and others prowl about in quest of food; and his superior strength renders him a better defender than one of the females would be; and, indeed, it is far from uncommon for the natives to find one or more of these rapacious beasts lying dead near the nest, killed by a stroke of the bird's powerful foot.

The supernumerary eggs placed round the nest on the outside of the circular mound, are regarded as a provision for

hours after being hatched, they require a supply of food. The period of incubation is from thirty-six to forty days. In the middle of the day the eggs, partially covered by the sand, are left for an hour or two by the parent birds, the heat of the sun being sufficient to preserve their proper temperature. In Arabia, it is stated that incubation commences in the rainy season, and that the young are hatched in spring, before the sun gives forth any considerable degree of heat;the presumption is, therefore, that they are never left in that country.

The flesh of the young ostrich is reported to be very good, and the eggs, both in Arabia and throughout Africa, are regarded as great delicacies; but the utmost caution is required in procuring them; for if the parent bird perceives that the nest has been visited or disturbed, she breaks all that remain, and immediately abandons the spot. The natives, therefore, use a very long stick with a hook, in order to draw them forth, and cautiously conceal their footsteps, as well as their persons, from the view of the birds; and if this be well managed, four or five new-laid eggs may be obtained for several days. It is not man only that is eager to rob the ostrich of its eggs;in South Africa there is a species of fox called the caama, which preys upon them to a great extent; but this animal is sometimes killed by the parent birds, which, when they observe their insidious enemy, run to assault it with fury. The animosity displayed by the ostrich towards the caama, is a fact well known to the natives, who turn it to their own profit; for, when wishing to procure these birds, they are in the habit of fastening a dog near the eggs, and conceal themselves close by, waiting the event. On seeing the dog, the ostrich rushes to the attack, and, rendered incautious by its eagerness, is killed by the bullet or arrow. The ostrich, in fact, watches over its eggs with great assiduity, and, as the outlying eggs prove, is instinctively provident for her young.

And here we may allude to the wellknown passage in the book of Job, xxxix. 14, 15, 16, "Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not her's: her labour is in vain without fear."

Some persons believe that in very hot latitudes the ostrich does not sit upon the eggs, but leaves them covered up in the sand to be hatched by the natural heat of the sun. This may be, but it is not by any means an ascertained fact; besides, it is evidently of the ostrich of the Syrian and Arabian deserts that the writer is speaking. And again, other points of the description are apparently as inapplicable to the ostrich of the tropical regions as of Syria. The difficulty is not got over by shifting the account from the Syrian ostrich to the ostrich of the torrid zone. To us it appears that these verses are read with a prepossessed idea of the meaning. The ostrich does commit her eggs to the sand. She deposits them in it, and may occasionally, and does occasionally, leave them; but it is not said that she does not incubate-she warmeth them in the dust; the original word "warmeth" (tehammena) has, we believe, an active signification, she herself warmeth them in the dust-she does not leave them to be warmed. Now, as to her "hardening herself against her young ones," it is well known that, on the most trifling occasion or any suspicious appearance, the accidental approach of a man or large beast of prey, she leaves her eggs, and also her young ones, and often never returns, or if she does, it is when her young have perished, or the chicks in the half-incubated eggs have lost their vitality. It is often the case, both in Arabia and the Sahara, that the Arabs find nests thus deserted, the eggs contained in them being addled, or the chicks, in a more or less advanced stage, dead and putrid. Frequently, too, they meet with a few miserable young ones, evidently hatched but a few days, and about the size of a bantam fowl, straggling about half starved, and uttering a plaintive sound. They are evidently birds abandoned by the parent, and left prematurely to themselves. They have wandered from the nest, and perhaps the mother never broke the store eggs for their nourishment. In this view the ostrich may be regarded as stupid, cruel, and destitute of that natural affec

tion for its offspring which quadrupeds and birds in general display so preeminently. Other birds will bring food even to their caged young,-you may look at their nests, and scare the parent away, but she watches all the time, and returns to her brood the instant you depart. But the ostrich, scared away, either does not return, or returns when it is too late.

Most of the young ones, we suspect, when abandoned prematurely, perish,unless, indeed, they happen to be in a spot where food is obtainable. In the Sahara, indeed, it is a marvel how the old ones manage to live. Dr. Shaw states, that the parts of that vast desert which these birds chiefly frequent, are destitute of all manner of food and herbage, except it be some tufts of coarse grass, with a few solitary plants, utterly destitute of moisture and nourishment;-the herbage is, indeed, withered "afore it groweth up," Psa. cxxix. 6. Yet these herbs, dry and parched as they are, will sometimes have both their leaves and stalks studded over with a great variety of land-snails, which may afford the ostriches nutriment. It is very probable that lizards, small snakes, and other reptiles, as well as insects, constitute a considerable part of their food. Yet still, considering the great voracity of this bird, and also its bulk, it is wonderful how it should be able to subsist, and still more so how the young, after their first provisions are exhausted, should be brought up and nourished.

The ostrich feeds upon the tops of shrubby plants, seeds, and grain, and also reptiles and insects;-we have often seen these birds in the Zoological Gardens pursue flies and other insects, and snap at them.

There is another point which marks the stupidity of this gigantic bird, and proves its want of understanding. We allude to its propensity for swallowing articles which are perfectly indigestible, and often deleterious or hurtful;-pieces of metal, glass, coins, stones, wood, leather, cordage, have been all found in the stomachs of these birds, and sometimes in abundance. Occasionally the bird is killed in consequence of this undistinguishing voracity. Valisnieri saw one perish from swallowing a quantity of quick lime; and some years since, one died in the Zoological Gardens, from swallowing a lady's parasol.

It does not appear that this habit of

swallowing hard substances is the result of captivity;-in their wild state, they swallow not only pebbles, which most probably assist digestion, but any other materials which chance may throw in their way, not even rejecting the dung of birds, and the like. Occasionally the ostrich strays about the borders of sown and cultivated lands, and is a most unwelcome visitor, as it not only devours great quantities of corn, but also tramples down the straw, thus committing great devastation.

The description of the ostrich is too familiar to be all detailed; the height of the adult male is between seven and eight feet.

The young ostrich is covered with coarse plumage of a blackish brown, mottled and striped with yellowish. The feathers of the back have the shafts dilated into a thin horny strip.

The ostrich is decidedly the largest of all birds now known in a state of existence; but, as we have previously observed, it was exceeded by one species of dinornis, which, at no remote epoch, wandered over the hills of New Zealand. All the terrestrial wingless, or, rather, imperfectly-winged birds, indeed, are of considerable stature, except the apteryx or kiwi; but, between the latter bird and the other struthious species, the ostrich, for example, there are many points of dissimilarity, independent of magnitude. The kiwi is endowed with an exquisite sense of smell; in the ostrich this sense is dull the eyes of the kiwi are minute, and they are constructed for nocturnal vision; those of the ostrich are large, and its powers of vision are peculiarly strong, it scans the expanse of desert around it, its eyes undimmed by the glare of a vertical sun. The kiwi breeds in holes, the ostrich in the sand. With respect to the emeu, the rhea, and the cassowary, they very much resemble the ostrich in general habits and manners, particularly the two former. The cassowary lives on the luxuriant Moluccas, and other islands of the Asiatic Archipelago; and, though powerful and fleet, it is not a desert bird, and its digestive organs are not adapted for coarse, hard diet, but for fruits and succulent vegetables. He is bold and resolute, but by no means intelligent. None of the struthionidæ, in fact, appear to be elevated even among birds in the scale of intelligence ;-and the expression in reference to the ostrich, "God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he

imparted to her understanding," is applicable to them all.

In concluding our history of the ostrich, it may be as well to observe that we commenced by some observations on the group in general, and, after taking a review of the living and the extinct species, entered into some details, we trust, not uninteresting, respecting the latter; first, because they are little known--some not at all to the non-scientific world, whose instruction we especially aim at; and secondly, because the history of every animal is more full, and more replete with information, when accompanied by an outline of the species most nearly allied to it, and especially by an account, as far as it can be made out, of the species which, from some cause or causes, have disappeared from the surface of the earth, leaving few memorials, excepting their bones, to testify of their previous existence in places or countries which shall know them no more. When these relics are investigated, we find that the ostrich group, instead of being so extremely limited in species as it now is, was once a numerous assemblage,-that the hand of man has produced irreparable devastation among them, and that, were it not for a concurrence of circumstances in its favour, even the camel-bird of the desert would, before now, have shared the fate of the dodo and the dinornis. M.

A WAR BALLOON.

leon's expedition to Egypt, in 1799, may AMONG the curious features of Napobe numbered a war balloon, employed, we presume, for the purpose of executing surveys, or pouring down missiles upon the heads of the enemy. This balloon was afterwards refitted at the public expense, and employed by M. Gay Lussac, the eminent chemist, in scientific pursuits. He ascended in it to the great height of four miles and a half, carrying with him a flask, carefully exhausted and fitted with a stop-cock, in order to bring down a portion of air from the higher regions. The lovers of fresh air will be gratified to learn that their lungs may enjoy this luxury as easily on terra firma drawn by Lussac was found, on analysis, as in such dangerous altitudes. The air to be exactly the same as that collected near the surface of the earth.

ANCIENT NAILS.

SOME nails of a peculiar form, seven or eight inches long, the heads about an inch and a half square, have been discovered at Bourne-park, near Canterbury. It is supposed by some that these nails were used in the crucifixion of malefactors during the dominion of the Romans in Britain. A Roman burial-place is situate not far distant from the spot where the skeletons were disinterred, and these malefactors were apparently buried on the outside of the ordinary cemetery. One of the nails is stated to have been driven directly through the shoulder-blade of the body.

GOD IS A FATHER.

66
FROM THE MERCY SEAT."

EARTHLY parents die; they dwell in houses of clay; their foundation is in the dust, and they are crushed before the

moth.

ven.

The heart that beats for

us

must soon beat its last throb, and sleep beneath the clods of the valley. Not so, however, with our Father who is in heaAround the grave of the fondest earthly parent, the children of God may exclaim, "The Lord liveth, and blessed be my rock, and let the God of my salvaTime passes, tion be exalted.' but shortens not his duration. Years roll

away upon years, while he still lives in the bloom of his eternity. The expressions of parental love cannot follow those on whom they are lavished to the grave; and protect them from corruption and the worm; nor go up with them to the bar of judgment, and shield them from

the sentence of a violated law. It is a corruptible inheritance only which they can leave to their children, to be divided among them for a brief period in this transitory world. Our Father who is in heaven, however, distributes to his children honours that are unwasting, an inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away; a building of God, a house not made with hands,

eternal in the heavens. In this Father's

house are many mansions. Their home is above the clouds; God himself is the heritage of his people—their heaven, and their exceeding great reward.

"Be

frown of wrath upon his brow, nor with menaced damnation on his lips, nor with the thunderbolt of vengeance in his hand, that he invites sinners to his throne. There are other discoveries of the Divine nature than these. There is the heart of love; there is the infinitude of love, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. hold," saith he, "I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." Though unworthy of the privilege, though we cannot acquire it by any work of righteousness, though the gold of Ophir cannot purchase it, it is a privilege that he gives gives as an affectionate father to his son as a wealthy, bountiful prince adopts some poor orphan, and makes him the inheritor of his crown.

Come, then, ye who are young! No longer despise the grace and bounty of your Father who is in heaven. Come and enter into his family. Now, while heart are open to impressions that will conscience is yet tender, and memory and leave their trace upon many a passing year; now, while the evil days come not, remember your Creator in the days of your youth. He utters no stronger and more affectionate claim than when he says, "My son, give me thine heart." He would have those wayward and wandering thoughts, those dissipated and vain and idolatrous affections weaned from others, and concentrated on himself. Child of promise and of hope, of solicitude and prayer! thoughtless and gay, and never more in need of a Father's care, wilt thou not from this time say unto him, "My Father, thou art the Guide of my youth?"

Ye, too, who are absorbed in earth,

infatuated by its pleasures, burdened with its business, or grasping after its wealth and honours, come ye, and seek the repose, and set your affections on the inheritance which earth has not, and

which pertains only to the family of God. Why, pilgrims and strangers, give ye to that world, the fashion of which passeth away, the affections which are due only to Him who liveth for ever and ever? "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

Ye children of sorrow! to you the voice