(4) Uses. Though at first sight useless, ex cept for their beautiful plumes, we may be as sured that Providence has not appointed their abode in the desert in vain; and they still con tinue to exist, not only in Africa, but in the region of Arabia, east and south of Palestine beyond the Euphrates; but it may be a question whether they extend so far to the eastward as Goa, although that limit is assigned them by late French ornithologists.
The flesh of a young ostrich is said to be not unpalatable; but its being declared unclean in Mosaic legislation may be ascribed to a two fold cause. The first is sufficiently obvious from its indiscriminate voracity already mentioned, and the other may have been an intention to lay a restriction upon the Israelites in order to wean them from the love of a nomad life, which hunting in the desert would have fostered; for ostriches must be sought on the barren plains, where they are not accessible on foot, except by stratagem. When pursued, they cast stones and gravel behind them with great force ; and though it requires long endurance and skill, their natural mode of fleeing in a circular form enables well mounted Arabs to overtake and slay them.
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Figuratiete. (i) The Arabs sometimes dis cover whole nests of ostrich eggs undisturbed : some of them are sweet and good, others are addled and corrupted ; others again contain young ones of different grc wth, according to the thne. it may be presumed, they have been forsaken by the dam. The Arabs often find little ostriches no bigger than well-grown pullets, half-starved, straggling about and moaning like so many dis tressed orphans for their mother. In this man ner the ostrich may be said to be hardened against her young ones as though they were not hers. This want of affection is recorded in Lam. iv :3 : 'the daughter of my people is become cruel, like ostriches in the wilderness ;' that is, by deserting their own, and receiving others instead. (2) As to companionship the ostrich (Job xxx :29, marg.) is a figure of extreme desolation ; taken from the isolated life of that bird in the desert.