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The Sage of the NorthWest Fringe asserts >I am sure this is an error: parts of Nacashire are civilised, too. >Off-shore islands, as it were. Withwhichlike assertion I fully concur, off-shore islands being a clearly indispensable component of any self-respectable civilisation: after all, where else would the Kleptocrats of the planet stash their loot but "off-shore"? And, re Cameron Barnes' up-date on the on-going Ostraihlian umes/emus contraversy, I can only say that clearly anyone who believes in the existance of a "University of New England" in such a distant place, well..... On the other wing, however, I am pleased to inform the list that, using my near-magical powers as a book wizard, a recent libery sale out here in post-literate California yielded a rare copy of E.W. Martin's _The Birds of the Latin Poets_ (Stanford U.P., 1914. 8vo. 260pp.), which purports to be "...fairly comprehensive down into the second century of the empire...", and which (p. 158) proceeds directly from "OSSIFRAGE" to "PALUMBES" without missing a beat. >From which I am methodologically challenged to conclude that ostriches were imported into Africa from Ostraihlian sometime after the Silver Age, and probably well into Middlevil times. And, my apologies to Julia Barrow. Not for a moment did I doubt that _struthio/strucio_ = ostrich and is found (if you say so) in the _Vita Oswaldi_. The point (such as it may have been) of my knit piquing was your suggestion that this might have been a "copyist's corruption", which I am quite willing to believe, providing there is *some* word which *might* be linguistically or palaeographically confused with _struthio/strucio_. I know nothing of the methods of the proper textual editing of literary/historical works, and my work with charters is entirely ad hoc and by-the-seat-of-me-pants, so I was just curious if the "copyist's corruption" point was merely the semi-automatic qualification of a careful scholar. Sorry for the mis-understanding. Best to all you birds from here, Christopher p.s. I'll try to bring the Martin to the zoo for the perusal of the List; it is much too valuable to put up for sale. ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%