26 Shufeldt, Material for a Study of the MegapodiidcP. [,^,^"5",!^ 



liead and Imck of neck. Bill large; superior mandible decurved ; 

 horn colour. Nostril naked, circular. Legs and feet large and 

 strong ; brownish-black (PL VII., fig. ii). Wings ample ; feathers 

 broad, and, in this skin, primaries reaching almost to end of tail. 

 Upper tail coverts plumaceous, bright reddish-brown. Fourteen 

 black tail feathers, which are broad. Tail rounded.* 



The description in the " British Catalogue " (vol. xxii., p. 470) 

 apparently applies only to the adult male. In part it states : — 

 " Head and neck almost entirely naked, with the exception of a 

 few hair-like feathers, which are most numerous along the super- 

 ciliary stripe and on the nape. An elongate, fleshy crest commences 

 on the forehead at the base of the culmen, elevated in front and 

 spread out over the crown of the head to the nape, the whole 

 being covered with a close-set horny papillae ; on either side of 

 the nape there arises a large elongate wattle placed at right angles 

 to the neck, and from the basal part of the fore-neck there hangs 

 down over the chest a single long, subcylindrical wattle ; the 

 colour of these wattles, as well as the naked skin of the head and 

 neck, appears to have been red or orange ; bill and feet dusky," 

 &c. 



The "wattles" spoken of here are but faintly shown in the 

 specimen at hand, which may have been a female, and in that 

 sex they may not be as prominent as in the male (?). In any 

 event, had I described the bird at hand, it would have been quite 

 a pardonable oversight had I taken what remained of these wattles 

 for the shrivelled-up skin of the neck. 



Alfred Newton says that this bird " has frequently made its 

 mound, laid its eggs, and reared its young in the Zoological Gardens, 

 after the manner described many years ago by Mr. Bartlett {Proc. 

 Zool. Soc, i860, pp. 426, 427). In earlier days the position of 

 this bird was a great puzzle to some ornithologists, who thought, 

 from the form of its bill, that it was a bird of prey, and called it 

 the 'New Holland Vulture'" ("Diet. Birds," p. 59). 



Megacephalox (Tcmm.) 

 (Ogilvie-Grant, I.e., p. 471.) 

 M. maleo, Hart. (p. 472), Celebes and Sangi Island. 

 There arc no skins of this Megapode in the National Museum 

 collection, and I have never seen a specimen. It has, however, 

 been observed and described by others on many occasions. f 



Before passing to my description of the eggs and osteology of 

 the MegapodiidcB, I will terminate this part of my paper by 

 quoting the time-honoured description of Wallace of these birds 



* Oustalet, Le Nat., No. 41, p. 323 (1880). Salvadori, T., Ann. Mus. Civ. 

 Gerrov., xviii., p. 8 (1882) : id. Orn. Pap., iii., p. 2i,^ (1882). Oustalet, Ann. 

 Sci. Nat., xi.. p. 38, fig. 33 (adult), 34 (juv.) (188 1). 



fSarasin, P. and F., " Zeits. d. Gesellschaft f. Erd-Kunde," Berlin, 1894, 

 PP- 375. 388, 396, and 398. This naturalist found that Megaccpfialtim 

 maleo, of the Celebes, lays its eggs in the neighbourhood of hot springs, near 

 the seashore. 



