these eggs undisturbed, some of which are sweet and good, others addled and corrupted. . . . They oftener meet a few of the little ones, no bigger than well-grown pullets, half-starved, straggling and moaning about, like so many distressed orphans, for their mothers.”

Yes, “God has made her forget wisdom,” and yet her young ones are protected by providence just as well as the young of the stork, the emblem of maternal tenderness. The ostrich’s very want of wisdom is not without wise design by God, just as in the sufferings of Job, which had seemed so unreasonable to him, there was a wise purpose.

What happens when the ostrich detects danger? It does not hide its head in the sand. Rather, it flaps its wings on high and “laughs at the horse and at its rider.” With its two long legs and flapping wings this bird outruns many fast four-footed animals. Historian Xenophon wrote: “But no one ever caught the ostrich, for in her flight she kept constantly drawing on her pursuer, now running on foot, and again lifting herself up with her wings spread out, as though she had hoisted sails.” Similarly Shaw’s Travels in Barbary says:

“Neither are the Arabs ever dexterous enough to overtake them, even when they are mounted upon their best horses. They, when they raise themselves up for flight, laugh at the horse and his rider. They afford him an opportunity only of admiring at a distance the extraordinary agility and the stateliness likewise of their motions. . . . Nothing certainly can be more beautiful and entertaining than such a sight; the wings, by their repeated, though unwearied, vibrations, equally serving them for sails and oars; whilst their feet, no less assisting in conveying them out of sight, are no less insensible of fatigue.”

When laughing at the horse, how fast does the ostrich run? “So fleet are they,” says The Encyclopedia Americana, “that even the Arab on his blooded steed can seldom overtake one single-handed, and even when hunted in relays, as the birds circle about their favorite territory, one or more horses are frequently sacrificed to the chase.” The volume The Animal Kingdom says: “It can outrace most of its enemies on the African plains. Forty miles per hour is a fair estimate of its speed.” Some naturalists limit its top speed to twenty-eight miles per hour; but Martin Johnson, the motion picture photographer of wild life, said the bird’s maximum speed is fifty miles per hour.

Jehovah’s words about the ostrich, wild ass and wild bull show that the great Bestower of instincts does according to his will; and what can man do about it? The divine will prevails in this as in all the affairs of life and we are wise to work in harmony with it. “You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.”—Rev. 4:11.

The Complex Starfish

◆ The more man learns about living creatures the more evident it becomes that they are the product of a wise Creator. Recently gained knowledge about the starfish is an example of this. About only one of the remarkable features of this creature, the magazine Natural History of November, 1961, said: “The nervous system of a single starfish, with all its various nerve ganglia and fibers, is more complex than London’s telephone exchange.”