SLUMP IN OSTRICHES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19691, 19 January 1926, Page 6

SLUMP IN OSTRICHES.

THOUSANDS BEING KILLED. POOR DEMAND FOR FEATHERS. There is something impressive about tM ostrich. From Job to Mr Kipling- the literary men have male a fuss about the creature. He has his place in our proverbs, though there is no reason to believe that any ostrich ever did what all Ms family are said to do. But such are the penalties of fame. Nobody ever became % popular figure without the voice of the people attributing to him foolish or an* pleasant habits. But now it reports that the ostrich is entering upon a new age (says the Daily Telegraph}. Tear* ago there was a slump in ostriches. Their feathers ceased to please the fair. Why this should have been no man knows. The vicissitudes of feathers form one of the darkest mysteries of fashion. The noble savage ever loves to wear phnoeg; at suitable and unsuitable parts of his figure. But when he achieves ciTilisatioo ho eschews feathers. Greece and Rome wore none. Until the Prince of Wales mounted feathers, some 600 years ago, neither man nor woman in England cared for them. Men gave them up some long time ago. The age of the “Three Musketeers” was the prime of male plumage, and only the army plumes itself nowadays. But women were fully and amply fledged till the very eve of the war. The golden age of the ostrich, they say, was the year of grace 1913. In that year the Oudtshoorn district cf the Cape, where ostriches mostly congregate, sold nearly three million pounds’ worth of feathers. It has never had such prosperity since, and last year the value of its exports had fallen to a quarter of a million. The tail and wings of the ostrich are as they ever were, and what they used to be women still are. yet the attraction of one for the other has* ceased, and the farmers of tbft Cape have come to dislike the ostrich as much as Job did. But of late it has occurred to some ingenious mind that though women will not wear ostrich feathers, there is no just cause or impediment why they should not wear ostrich skin and this material never having been heard of before, has become very popular for female shoes. The obvious objection that an ostrich cannot part with its skin as comfortably as with its feathers, and that the development of the ostrich shoe industry must cause the destruction of the bird that produced golden harvests, does not weigh with the ostrich farmers, who are not inclined to wait till the various and mutahk ancj of woman tarns again to feathers, -nd wish to be rid of tta unreliable birds at almost any price. So thousands are being slain, “and their flesh turned into biltong,” news which, excites in us some alarm. Biltong it may be in the Cape, but what will it be when, it gets to London ? So much strange and durable flesh is already being served under the name of chicken. Even if the cook, should devil it, an ostrich’s drumstick might be hard to bear. In the public interest we deprecate this slaughter. The ostrich farmers ought to consider other methods for employing their stock till fine feathers again make fine birds. Surely the children in the “Swiss Family Robinson” rode upon ostriches. A team or two might be supplied to the London Traffic Advisory Council for experiment and report. That should speed up transport.