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PITY THE POOR OSTRICH Not least unfortunate among the sufferers from the war are the ostriches An ostrich a dozen years ago was a very valuable animal the price of a wellgrown young bird being ordinarily about 500 Ostrich fanning was a prospering and promising industry in this country though the main source of feather supply was South Africa At that period we were importing GOOOOO pounds of the plumes annually from Cape Colony representing a first ¬ hand value of 3000000 The Cape government had put an embargo on exportation of the birds because it wished to discourage rivals in the market But there were more than GOOO in the United States the bulk of them in Arizona and Southern Cali ¬ fornia There were a few in Florida and a flock was started near Bloomsburg N J Unluckily not long before the war began ostrich feathers sud ¬ denly went out of fashion The price of plumes dropped Thou came Armageddon and the South African flocks mostly perished of starvation It did not pay to feed them provender being scarce And now we learn that in Arizona large numbers of the birds are being slaughtered for meat Women are not wearing their feathers and it does not pay to keep them It is surely a great pity The fashiou for ostrich plumes will certainly come back and they will be very costly by reason of the scarcity of the birds From the naturalists view ¬ point it is extremely fortunate that the French government maintains in the Sudan a great ostrich preserve in which the birds are not allowed to be hunted or killed From this source the domesti ¬ cated flocks may be recruited later on Baltimore American
