. A dictionary of birds . is bestowal of this name, so well known in classicalmythology, is not apparent. ^ The name Touyou, also of South-American origin, was ap])lied to it byBrisson and others, but erroneously, as Cuvier shews, since by that name, orsomething like it, the Jabietj is properly meant. •^ A7171. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, xx. p. 500. * Mr. Harting, in his and Mr. De Mosenthals Ostriches and Ostrich Farviing,from which the woodcut here introduced is by permission copied, gives (pp. 67-72)some portentous statistics of the destruction of Rheas for the sake of theirfeathers, which, he says
. A dictionary of birds . is bestowal of this name, so well known in classicalmythology, is not apparent. ^ The name Touyou, also of South-American origin, was ap])lied to it byBrisson and others, but erroneously, as Cuvier shews, since by that name, orsomething like it, the Jabietj is properly meant. •^ A7171. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, xx. p. 500. * Mr. Harting, in his and Mr. De Mosenthals Ostriches and Ostrich Farviing,from which the woodcut here introduced is by permission copied, gives (pp. 67-72)some portentous statistics of the destruction of Rheas for the sake of theirfeathers, which, he says, are known in the trade as Vautour to distinguish,them from those of the African bird. 50 786 RHEA already described in the case of other Ratite birds. Like most ofthem it is polygamous, and the male performs the duty of incuba-tion, brooding more than a score of eggs, the produce of severalfemales—facts known to Nieremberg more than two hundred andfifty years since, but hardly accepted by naturalists until Rhea. From causes which, if explicable, do not here concern us, noexamples of this bird seem to have been brought to Europe beforethe beginning of the present century, and accordingly the descriptionspreviously given of it by systematic writers were taken at secondhand, and were mostly defective if not misleading. In 1803Latham issued a Avretched figure of the species from a half-grown RHEA 787 specimen in the Leverian Museum, and twenty years later said hehad seen only one other, and that still younger, in Bullocks collec-tion { Hist. B. viii. p. 379).^ A bird living in confinement atStrasburg in 1806 was, however, described and figured by Hammerin 1808 {Ann. du Mus4um, xii. pp. 427-433, pi. 39), and, though hedoes not expressly say so, we may infer from his account that it hadbeen a captive for some years. In England the Report of theZoological Society for 1833 announced the Rhea as having beenexhibited for the first time in its gardens during the prece
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Keywords: ., bookauthorlyde, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirds
