THEIR REPRODUCTION (NESTS) 267 



book on the Malay Archipelago that the Mound 

 Bird inhabiting the Moluccas forms an immense 

 mound of vegetable rubbish as much as eight 

 feet high and thirty feet in diameter. This 

 the birds throw up with apparent ease, grasping 

 the material in their large feet and throwing 

 it backwards. In the centre of the mound, at 

 a depth of several feet, the eggs are laid, and 

 eventually hatched by the heat generated by 

 fermentation. After the eggs are once deposited 

 in this curious incubator the parent birds appear 

 to evince no further thought for them, and the 

 newly-hatched chicks work their way up through 

 the rotten rubbish and at once run off into the 

 adjoining forests. The species that burrow in 

 the sand appear to tunnel obliquely for about 

 three feet, and then the eggs are laid at the end 

 of the gallery. The entrance is then closed 

 and the eggs left to hatch in due course. 

 Another species peculiar to the Nicobars was 

 found to make a mound eight feet high and 

 sixty feet in circumference. Sometimes lizards 

 lay their eggs in these mounds. The Australian 

 Brush Turkeys (of various genera in the same 

 family) have very similar habits, collecting 

 enormous heaps of vegetation, sometimes con- 

 sisting of many cartloads, and laying their eggs 



