mother has on the new-fashion'd petticoat, except that the modern is gathered at the waist; my grandmother appears as if she stood in a large drum, whereas the ladies now walk as if they were in a go-cart. For all this lady was bred at court, she became an excellent country-wife, she brought ten children, and when I shew you the library, you shall see in her own hand (allowing for the difference of the language) the best receipt in England both for an hasty-pudding and a white-pot.

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If you please to fall back a little, because 'tis necessary to look at the three next pictures at one view; these are three sisters. She on the right hand, who is so very beautiful, died a maid; the next to her, still handsomer, had the same fate, against her will; this homely thing in the middle had

both their portions added to her own, and was stolen by a neighbouring gentleman, a man of stratagem and resolution, for he poisoned three mastiffs to come to her, and knocked down two deer-stealers in carrying her off. Misfortunes happen in all families: The theft of this romp and so much money, was no great matter to our estate. But the next heir that possessed it was this soft gentleman, whom you see there: Observe the small buttons, the little boots, the laces, the slashes about his clothes, and above all the posture he is drawn in (which to be sure was his own choosing); you see he sits with one hand on a desk writing and looking as it were another way, like an easy writer, or a sonneteer: He was one of those that had too much wit to know how to live in the world; he was a man of no justice, but great

ever by all hands I have been informed that he was every way the finest gentleman in the world. That debt lay heavy on our house for one generation, but it was retrieved by a gift from that honest man you see there, a citizen of our name, but nothing at all akin to us. I know Sir ANDREW FREEPORT had said behind my back, that this man was descended from one of the ten children of the maid of honour I shewed you above; but it was never made out. We winked at

PERSON travelling through the Cape, if asked to describe the kind of country he had seen, would probably divide it into three classes: first, the strip of sandflats tufted with bushes bordering the coast, called in Cape-Dutch the duine-veldt; second, the grassy plains lying between and at the foot of the mountain ranges which intersect the colony, called the grass-veldt; third, the vast barren stretches of waterless desert clothed only with brown scrub and striated with dry river beds, known as the karroo. If our traveller was of an inquiring turn of mind, he would probably learn that ostriches ran wild (and are actually now seen) in the duine-veldt and the karroo, but never in the grass-veldt, where the pasture is sour, and where the noble bird who loves a wide range of open country is cooped up between mountains. But in spite of the latter fact, which is as true now as it was before taming ostriches was ever contemplated, he would find that every farmer, however sour his pastures and confined his grazing-grounds, was beginning to divert all his ready capital and intelligence to the production of feathers, simply because no other branch of farming brings in as large or as speedy a return.

Eight years ago, prime white feathers were fetching 607. per pound, a pair of good breeding birds as much as 300l., chickens a day old 51. each. Many farmers were deriving an income of 500l. to 600l. per annum from a pair of breeding-birds. Clerks invested all their hard-earned savings in a pair of ostriches, gave them to some trustworthy farmer on half-shares to look after, and drew therefrom an easy income far larger than the salary they were toiling for. The new industry gave an almost incalculable

impetus to a better system of farming, to the fencing of irrigable lands, and to the construction of reservoirs where water could be stored up for droughts extending over a period of two or even, in rare instances, three years. Land rose to fabulous prices, and farmers contented themselves with sowing only enough corn for their own use, covering every available patch that could be brought under irrigation with the new fodder-plant, lucerne.

It happened about this time that the Standard Bank of South Africa was pushing an uphill business in the teeth of Africander prejudice, and it was wise enough to see that nothing would gain favour so readily among the rising generation of farmers as the fostering by every means at its disposal of an industry that looked as easy as it was golden.

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Ostrich-farming had also this to recommend it, that it did not, like every other branch of farming in the Cape, depend upon Kimberley for its prosperity. Young Africanders were shrewd enough to see that when the price of corn, maize, oats, wine, or tobacco, hardly paid the cost of cultivation, the production of feathers was remunerative beyond measure. Superficial observers coming from Britain with cut and dried notions regards scientific farming were only too ready to cry ruin upon a land where thousands of pounds were spent upon imported butter and milk, and where meat was twice as dear as in any other of the colonies. Moralists even were not wanting to swell the chorus of condemnation in anathematising a young and growing country whose serious energies were entirely devoted to the adornment of ladies' hats. The only answer to shallow criticism of this order was, and is still, in spite of an almost unparalleled depreciation of prices, which is the necessary result of over-production, that no branch of

farming is better adapted to the greater portion of the country or yields larger returns. Feathers have now reached their nadir at 87. per pound for prime whites, but ostriches have also suffered a corresponding decline, and are now sufficiently cheap to enable small capitalists, with even two or three hundred pounds at their disposal, to realise cent. per cent. per annum on their outlay. If fashion continues to have the good taste to place ostrich feathers in the front rank as articles of adornment, there is no reason why the karroo should not become one large ostrich farm, following the law of nature in the survival of the fittest.

Let me now endeavour to put before English readers a clear sketch of ostrich farming as conducted in the most fertile of the three classes into which we have supposed our traveller to have divided Cape soils, viz., the karroo. Behind the farm runs a range of mountains trending across the colony. Before us stretches an open flat, brown, parched and barren, covered with the curious bushes that look so grotesque to an English eye, such as the prickly pear, cactus, euphorbia, and spek-boom. It is hard to realise that this is the most fertile soil in the colony. It is a light-red mould, getting stiffer and more clayey as one nears the mountains. The farm is some three thousand acres in extent, surrounded partly by a wire fence, partly by dry stone walls heaped up by itinerant Kafirs. The whole of this enclosure is called a camp, and contains some two hundred ostriches. The birds are never removed from the camp except when they have to be plucked, or in the event of severe drought when the veldt, or pasture, is utterly burnt up. In the former case they are driven by a herd into a kraal, or cattle fold, where they have no room to turn round. The most approved way of removing the feathers is by cutting them off short with a knife and leaving the stumps to drop out. This system, which is called nipping, is not generally practised, as it involves waiting a month longer for the proceeds than plucking. Birds can be plucked, like a goose, every seven months, but nipped every eight months. It will be readily understood that nipping has also the advantage of being a painless process, and it is found that nipped birds continue to yield better feathers than those that are plucked. In nine cases out of ten, the pluck is sold beforehand to itinerant feather buyers, who are chiefly of the Jewish persuasion, and who buy the feathers at a fixed value per bird. They in their turn send their purchase

to Port Elizabeth, or sell to local merchants who ship to London. On a fair average it takes three birds to yield a pound of prime white feathers, which are only taken from the wings. The tails yield also white feathers of an inferior quality. The rest of the pluck is made up by black feathers in the male birds, and by drabs in the female. The ostrich chicken, which is plucked at the age of ten months, yields short feathers of a very inferior quality, erroneously termed spadonas. The third pluck of a bird is generally esteemed the best. Birds continue to be plucked up to the age of six years, when they usually evince a disposition to breed. It is not wise to pluck breeding-birds more than once a year, and this operation must never be undertaken in the winter. It will be easy to perceive that birds, whose habit it is to lay four or five times a year, will naturally suffer and refuse to sit when deprived of their warm covering in rainy or cold weather. A good pair of breedingbirds plucked judiciously will yield from fifty to eighty chickens in the year.

It is generally believed that an ostrich will eat anything. This will, however, prove to be a very unsafe doctrine for one who wishes to farm successfully. Young birds require very careful treatment. Like turkeychicks they thrive best on a mixed diet of chopped green food, grain in any form being too hard for digestion. Full grown birds flourish if allowed to roam over a large tract of veldt, which in ordinary seasons contains a varied assortment of saline bushes unsurpassed by any artificial grasses. Confinement of any but breeding-birds in small fields for more than a few hours in the day causes, probably, more losses than disease, droughts, and damp combined. With a deficiency of brain singular in an animal so large they are subject to sudden scares, and when excited rush with a perfect recklessness of any obstacles in their path as fatal to themselves as it is detrimental to their owners. Mr. Robertson of George showed me a sod-wall, a foot in breadth, through which a flock of birds had rushed with the speed of a hurricane, fortunately without injury to themselves. The breaches in the wall were as complete as if they had been cut through by a cannon-ball. Another farmer in the Cango District, whose farm lay adjacent to the high road, lost as many as thirty full-grown birds within three months, by reason of their taking fright and rushing blindly into a wire fence. Even in large enclosures, covering miles of country, wire is seldom, if ever, used alone as a fencing material, spars or