Largest organisms is frequently poorly documented and many are subject to conjecture and estimation. The largest living bird, a member of the Struthioniformes, is the common ostrich ("Struthio camelus"), from the plains of Africa and Arabia. A large male ostrich can reach a height of and weigh over . A mass of has been cited for the common ostrich but no wild ostriches of this weight have been verified. Eggs laid by the ostrich can weigh and are the largest eggs in the world today. The largest bird in the fossil record may be the extinct elephant birds ("Aepyornis") of Madagascar, which
The Lays of Beleriand of the Rings". There is an inscription in the Fëanorian characters (Tengwar, an alphabet Tolkien has devised for High-Elves) in the first pages of every History of Middle-earth volume, written by Christopher Tolkien and describing the contents of the book. The inscription in Book III reads: The Lays of Beleriand The Lays of Beleriand, published in 1985, is the third volume of Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume book series, "The History of Middle-earth", in which he analyzes the unpublished manuscripts of his father J. R. R. Tolkien. The book contains the long heroic lays or lyric poetry Tolkien wrote: these are "The