considers all her domestic obligations fulfilled, and disappears to
have a good gossip with her lady friends, leaving to her husband the
task of attending to the young brood. The male bird is really
dangerous at this time, for his forward kick is terrifically powerful.
The ostrich can run faster than any horse, but it is quite easy to
circumvent any charging bird. All that is necessary is to turn one's
horse quickly at right angles; the ostrich has such way on him that he
is unable to pull up, and goes tearing on a hundred yards beyond his
objective before he can change his direction. This manoeuvre repeated
two or three times leaves the bird discomfited; as they would say in
Ireland, "You have him beat." I confess that I have never seen an
ostrich bury his head in the sand to blind himself to any impending
danger, as he is traditionally supposed to do; I fancy that this is a
libel on a fairly sagacious bird, and that in reality the practice is
entirely confined to politicians.

The Argentine Republic is peculiar in possessing a venomous toad,
equipped like a snake with regular poison-glands and fangs. He is
known in the vernacular as escuerzo, and is rather a handsome
creature, wearing a green black-striped coat. I am told by learned
people that he is not a true toad, that his proper name is
_Ceratophrys ornata_, and that he is a cannibal, feeding on
harmless frogs and toads which he kills with his poison-fangs. There
was a plentiful supply of these creatures at Espartillar, and the
pupils, when they found an escuerzo, loved to tease him with a stick.
He is probably the worse-tempered and most irritable batrachian known,
and when prodded with a stick would puff himself out, and work himself
into a hideous passion. Every one went about high-booted, and possibly
his fangs were not powerful enough to penetrate a boot, but, anyhow,
he never made the attempt; he tried to snap at the hands instead, and