y. Now although it is most probable, from the number of eggs
found in one district being so extraordinarily great in proportion
to the parent birds, and likewise from the state of the ovarium of
the hen, that she may in the course of the season lay a large
number, yet the time required must be very long. Azara states that
a female in a state of domestication laid seventeen eggs, each at
the interval of three days one from another. (5/14. Azara volume 4
page 173.) If the hen was obliged to hatch her own eggs, before the
last was laid the first probably would be addled; but if each laid
a few eggs at successive periods, in different nests, and several
hens, as is stated to be the case, combined together, then the eggs
in one collection would be nearly of the same age. If the number of
eggs in one of these nests is, as I believe, not greater on an
average than the number laid by one female in the season, then
there must be as many nests as females, and each cock bird will
have its fair share of the labour of incubation; and that during a
period when the females probably could not sit, from not having
finished laying. (5/15. Lichtenstein, however, asserts "Travels"
volume 2 page 25, that the hens begin sitting when they have laid
ten or twelve eggs; and that they continue laying, I presume in
another nest. This appears to me very improbable. He asserts that
four or five hens associate for incubation with one cock, who sits
only at night.) I have before mentioned the great numbers of
huachos, or deserted eggs; so that in one day's hunting twenty were
found in this state. It appears odd that so many should be wasted.
Does it not arise from the difficulty of several females
associating together, and finding a male ready to undertake the
office of incubation? It is evident that there must at first be
some degree of association between at least two females; otherwise
the eggs would remain scattered over the wide plains, at distances
far too great to allow of the male collecting them into one nest:
some authors have believed that the scattered eggs were deposited
for the young birds to feed on. This can hardly be the case in
America, because the huachos, although often found addled and
putrid, are generally whole.

When at the Rio Negro in Northern Patagonia, I repeatedly heard the
Gauchos talking of a very rare bird which they called Avestruz
Petise. They described it as being less than the common ostrich
(which is there abund