2i8 A HISTORY OF BIRDS 



sand and run off at once into the forest. Wallace's Megapode 

 {Megapodiiis luallacei), which inhabits Gilolo, Ternate and 

 Bourou, has similar nesting habits, and so also have Brenchley's 

 Megapode {Megapodius brenchleyi) of '^ew Britain and Solomon 

 Islands, and Pritchard's Megapode {M. pritchardi) of Hope 

 Island. It would seem, however, that in Celebes the Maleo 

 occasionally breeds inland, and in this case the birds seek out, 

 in the highlands of the island and in the forest regions, spots 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of hot springs, thereby finding 

 compensation for the lack of the sun's rays. 



Yet other species adopt different methods. The Australian 

 Brush-turkey, for instance, lays its egg in a mound of decay- 

 ing and fermenting vegetable matter. Two or more females 

 commonly combine, scraping together by means of their enormous 

 and powerful feet a mass of twigs and rotten leaves and other 

 debris, till a heap is raised as much as six feet high and twelve 

 or fourteen yards in diameter at the base. The rotten leaves 

 and fine materials are placed in the centre, while the outside 

 is composed of sticks, leaves and twigs recently gathered. The 

 heap made, the birds dig down deep into the centre and there 

 deposit their eggs, in the fine leaf mould. From examination 

 of these mounds it would seem that the eggs are laid with the 

 pointed ends downwards, often in a circle, with three or four in 

 the centre, about six inches apart. As many as thirty-six eggs 

 have been taken from a mound of this description. The mound 

 of the Dark-billed Brush-turkey {Talegallus fiiscirostris) of 

 Southern New Guinea has been described by Von Rosenberg. 

 It is, he says, " composed of earth, mixed with sticks and 

 leaves, the whole forming a truncate cone eleven feet high and 

 twenty-five feet round the base. In the summit of the cone 

 we found the openings of five burrows which went down per- 

 pendicularly to a depth of four feet, and were filled with earth. 

 In four of these I found eggs which were placed vertically . . . 

 and were in various stages of development. In the mound the 

 thermometer rose to 93° Fahr., while the surrounding atmo- 

 sphere was only 85° in the shade." Of Duperry's Megapode 

 the traveller-naturalist Gilbert writes of a visit to Knocker's Bay 

 in search of this bird : " I suddenly found myself beside a mound 

 of gigantic proportions. It was fifteen feet in height and sixty 

 in circumference at the base, the upper part being about a third 



