What time she lifted up herself on high,.... It is sometimes eight foot high ; when alarmed with approaching danger she raises up herself, being sitting on the ground, and erects her wings for flight, or rather running;she scorneth the horse and his rider; being then, as Pliny says, higher than a man on horseback, and superior to a horse in swiftness; and though horsemen have been able to take wild asses and goats, very swift creatures, yet never ostriches, as Xenophon relates of those in Arabia; and this creature has another method, when pursued, by which it defies and despises, as well as hurts and incommodes its pursuers, which is by casting stones backward at them with its feet as out of a sling .
Philosoph. Transact. abridged, vol. 2. p. 360. Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 10. c. 1. De Expedit. Cyri, l. 1. Plin. ut supra. (Nat. Hist. l. 10. c. 1.) Aelian. de Animal. l. 4. c.