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
François Lays jeers from the audience, and had never recovered from the experience, eventually taking his own life with poison. Quéruel writes Lays managed to avoid making his return to the stage in "Iphigénie en Tauride", in which his character Oreste sang lines which were a little too suggestive coming from an ex-"Terrorist": "J'ai trahi l'amitié, j'ai trahi la nature/Des plus noirs attentats, j'ai comblé la mesure" ("I have betrayed friendship, betrayed Nature/I have gone to the extreme of blackest deeds"). On the other hand, according to the memoirs of Count , it was indeed in the role of Oreste that Lays