"
"And have your people," I asked, "many more such wonderfully
intelligent and useful creatures tamed to your service, besides the
ambau, the tyree, and these letter-carriers?"
"Oh yes!" she answered. "Nearly all our domestic animals will do
anything they are told which lies within their power. You have seen
the tyree marching in a line across a field to pick up every single
worm or insect, or egg of such, within the whole space over which they
move, and I think you saw the ambau gathering fruit. It is not very
usual to employ the latter for this purpose, except in the trees. Have
you not seen a big creature--I should call it a bird, but a bird that
cannot fly, and is covered with coarse hair instead of feathers? It is
about as tall as myself, but with a neck half as long as its body, and
a very sharp powerful beak; and four of these _carvee_ would clear a
field the size of our garden (some 160 acres) of weeds in a couple of
days. We can send them, moreover, with orders to fetch a certain
number of any particular fruit or plant, and they scarcely ever forget
or blunder.
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