144 Mr. A. R. Wallace on the 



4*3 inches long by 2'4 inches wide. When quite fresh they are 

 delicious eating, as delicate as a fowl's egg, but much richer, and 

 the natives come for more than fifty miles round to search for 

 them. After the eggs are once deposited in the sand the parent 

 birds pay no further attention to them. The young birds on 

 breaking the shell work their way up through the sand and run 

 off to the forest. 



The appearance of the birds when walking on the beach is 

 very handsome. The glossy black and rosy white of the plumage, 

 the helmeted head and the elevated tail, roofed like that of 

 the common hen, form a tout ensemble quite unique, which 

 tlieir stately and somewhat sedate walk renders still more 

 remarkable. When approached they run pretty quickly, and, if 

 suddenly disturbed, take flight to the lower branches of some 

 adjacent tree. There is hardly any difference between the 

 sexes, except that in the male the cranial protuberance and nasal 

 tubercles are a little larger, and the rosy or salmon tinge of the 

 breast and belly a little deeper ; but these characters are not so 

 constant and conspicuous as to make it always possible to distin- 

 guish the male from the female bird. 



When we consider the great distances the birds come and the 

 trouble they take to place the eggs in a proper situation, it 

 does seem extraordinary that they should take no further care 

 about them. It is, however, quite certain that they neither do 

 nor can watch over them. The eggs deposited by a number of 

 hens in succession in the same hole must render it impossible 

 for each to distinguish its own, and the food of the parent birds 

 can be obtained only by continual roaming, so that if the numbers 

 which come down to this beach alone in the breeding season 

 (according to the accounts, many hundreds or even thousands) 

 were obliged to remain in the vicinity, the greater part would 

 perish of hunger. 



In the structure of the feet of the Megucephaloii we may see a 

 reason why it departs from the habits of its nearest allies, the 

 Megapodii and TalegalU, which generally heap up mounds of 

 earth and rubbish in which to bury their eggs. The feet of the 

 ]\Ialeos are not nearly so strong in proportion as those of the 

 former birds, while the claws are short and straight, instead of 



