242 THE UNIVERSE. 



work of the Megapodius and that which a man could exe- 

 cute, we should really be astonished at the results. The 

 comparative size of the animal being very difficult to arrive 

 at on account of the variety of its attitudes, if then we 

 take the weight as a standard, we find that a Megapodius 

 weighing rather above 2 lbs. sometimes raises its mound 

 more than 10 feet in height ; * now, as a man weighs, on an 

 average, about 130 lbs., he must, in order to build a structure 

 corresponding to the nest of the bird, accumulate a moun- 

 tain of earth which would be almost double the height and 

 bulk of the great pyramid of Egypt ! 



The mighty task completed, the female bird confides its 

 eggs to it. She usually lays eight, which she disposes in a 

 circle in the centre of the nest among the herbs and leaves 

 which lie heaped up at this spot. They are placed at ex- 

 actly equal distances from each other and in a vertical 

 position. When the laying is completed the Megapodius 

 abandons its masterpiece and its offspring, Providence hav- 

 ing revealed to it that henceforth it is no longer useful to 

 them. 



Endowed with a marvellous chemical instinct, this bird 

 only collects such a mass of vegetable matter that it may 

 commit the hatching of its eggs to the fermentation pro- 

 duced among the collected plants. It is in fact on the heat 

 so engendered that the bird relies for supplying her place ; 

 the mother thus substituting a chemical process for her own 

 cares. 



1 One measured by Mr. Jukes was 150 feet in circumference, the slope of the 

 sides 18 to 24 feet, and the perpendicular height 10 or 12 feet. The eggs are as 

 large as those of a swan, and are considered a great delicacy, 



