102 



MECiAPODlID.E. 



sorry to see the bird toiling' away putting its house in order, after I had broken up the place, so 

 I made up my mind to fill up all the others I might break open. I only twice saw the bird 

 come and finish off the mound to her satisfaction after I had done the best I could. The birds 

 are very tame, and easily captured if required, but before many years are over very few will 

 remain, principally owing to the foxes, for where the gun kills one the foxes kill twenty. The 

 largest mound seen while in the scrub v/as from nine to ten feet in diameter, and about 

 four to four and a half feet high. The most eggs in one mound were twelve in number, seven 

 m the bottom circle, four in the next, and one in the top circle. I found a great number of 

 smaller mounds with from five to eight eggs in, and never saw more than one liird to a mound 

 there, although there may have been, but I do not think so. The laying time depends on the 

 season's rains for preparing the mound for eggs, it is opened out by the birds for the rains to 

 damp all the vegetable matter before they finally fill it in." 



Relative to the accompanying figure, Mr. Chas. G. Gibson, who was a member of the 

 transcontinental expedition engaged in the survey of the line from Kalgoorlie to the South 



DKSKRTED NESTINO-MODNIJ OF MALLEE-FOWL. 



Australian Border, remarks: — "The photograph of the nesting-mound of Lipoa ocellata I gave 

 you was taken on the loth September, 1908, about thirty miles south-east of Queen \^ictoria 

 Spring, Western Australia. The mound was an old one, and measured twenty to twenty-five feet 

 in diameter by four to five feet in maximum height. I took eggs the same year, on the 3rd 

 September, at Cardinia I'iocks, about eighty miles east to east-north-east of Kalgoorlie ; there 

 were eight fresh eggs in the mound, which was a small one, measuring only about six feet in 

 diameter by eighteen inches to two feet in height. I also opened a mound in November, 1905, 

 at the Cosmo Newbery Ranges, containing four fresh eggs; this mound was opened every day, 

 subsequent to the original opening, for six days, and operations proved that one egg was deposited 

 every second day; in every case the mound was filled in again by the birds within a few hours 

 of opening. My experience of these birds is that over the greater part of the interior of Western 

 Australia they are few and far between ; judging by the numbers of old mounds the birds are 

 either gradually becoming extinct or are moving on." 



