MEGA P ODE 541 



quarter of tlie present century. The first member of the Family 

 to receive authoritative recognition was one of the largest, inhabiting 

 the continent of Australia, where it is known as the Brush-Turkey, 

 and was originally described by Latham in 1821 under the name 

 of the New-Holland Vulture, a misleading designation which he 

 subsequently tried to correct on perceiving its Galline character. 

 It is the Talegallus lathami of modern ornithologists, and is nearly 

 the size of a hen Tturkey. Six smaller species of the same genus 

 have since been described, all from New Guinea or the neighboiiring 

 islands, but two of them, T. pyrrhopygius and T. hruyni, have been 

 separated to form a group JEpypodius. The Australian bird is of 

 a sooty-brown colour, relieved beneath by the lighter edging of 

 some of the feathers, but the head and neck are nearly bare, beset 

 with fine bristles, the skin being of a deep pinkish-red, passing above 

 the breast into a large wattle of bright yellow. The tail is commonly 

 carried upright and partly folded, something like that of a domestic 

 Fowl. 



The next form of which we may speak is another inhabitant of 

 Australia, commonly known in England as the Mallee-bird, but 

 to the colonists as Lowan and " Native Pheasant " — the Lipoa ocellata 

 first described by Gould {Proc. Zool. Soc. 1840, p. 126), which has 

 much shorter tarsi and toes, the head entirely clothed, and the tail 

 expanded. Its plumage presents a pleasing combination of greys 

 and browns of various tints, interspersed with black, white, and buff, 

 the wing-coverts and feathers of the back bearing each near the tip an 

 oval or subcircular patch, whence the trivial scientific name of the bird 

 is given, while a stripe of black feathers with a median line of white 

 extends down the front of the throat, from the chin to the breast. 

 There is but one species of this genus known, as is also the case with 

 the next to be mentioned, which is a singular bird long known to in- 

 habit Celebes, but not fully described until 1846,^ when it received 

 from Salomon Miiller (Arch. f. Naturgesch. xii. pt. 1, p. 116) the 

 name of Macrocephalon maleo, but, being shortly afterwards figured 

 by Gray and Mitchell {Gen. Birds, iii. pi. 123) under the generic 

 term of Megacephalon, has since commonly borne the latter appellation. 

 This is a very remarkable form, bearing a helmet-like protuberance 

 on the back of its head, all of which as well as the neck is bare and 

 of a bright red colour ; the plumage of the body is glossy black 

 above, and beneath roseate-white. 



Of the Megapodes proper, constituting the genus Megapodius, 

 many species have been described, but authorities are greatly at 

 variance as to the validity of several, and here it would be impossible 

 to name all that have been supposed to exist. Some are only 



^ As we have seen, it was mentioned in 1726 by Valentyn, and a young example 

 was in 1830 described and figured by Quoy and Gaimard ( Voy. 'Astrolabe ' : Oiseaux, 

 p. 239, pi. 25) as the Megapodius rubripes of Temminck, a wholly different bird. 



