When He Begins To Run
All The Game In Sight Follow His Example.
I have seen this folly
taken advantage of when he was feeding quietly in a valley open at both
Ends.
A number of men would commence running, as if to cut off his retreat
from the end through which the wind came; and although he had
the whole country hundreds of miles before him by going to the other end,
on he madly rushed to get past the men, and so was speared. He never swerves
from the course he once adopts, but only increases his speed.
When the ostrich is feeding his pace is from twenty to twenty-two inches;
when walking, but not feeding, it is twenty-six inches;
and when terrified, as in the case noticed, it is from eleven and a half
to thirteen and even fourteen feet in length. Only in one case
was I at all satisfied of being able to count the rate of speed
by a stop-watch, and, if I am not mistaken, there were thirty in ten seconds;
generally one's eye can no more follow the legs than it can
the spokes of a carriage-wheel in rapid motion. If we take the above number,
and twelve feet stride as the average pace, we have a speed
of twenty-six miles an hour. It can not be very much above that,
and is therefore slower than a railway locomotive. They are sometimes shot
by the horseman making a cross cut to their undeviating course,
but few Englishmen ever succeed in killing them.
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