150 LEAVES FROM THE 



Gould that they emerged without aid: others declared 

 that the old birds, when the fulness of time was come, 

 scratched down to their offspring, and set them free. 



Mr. Gilbert found this megapode confined almost ex- 

 clusively to the dense thickets near the sea-beach ; nor 

 does it appear to be met with far inland, except up the 

 banks of creeks. The birds go in pairs or singly, feeding 

 on the ground, on roots for the most part, which the 

 powerful claws of their great feet enable them to scratch 

 up, and on seeds, berries, and insects, especially the large 

 coleopterous kinds of the latter. They are not easily 

 procured, and though the whirring of their wings as they 

 fly away is often heard by those who approach their 

 haunts, the birds themselves are seldom seen. The 

 flight is heavy, and does not seem capable of being long 

 sustained. When first disturbed the jungle-fowl invari- 

 ably makes for a tree, and as soon as it there alights, 

 stretches out its head and neck in a straight line with the 

 body, and remains motionless in that attitude. When 

 thoroughly roused and alarmed it flies horizontally and 

 laboriously for about a hundred yards, with its legs hang- 

 ing down. Mr. Gilbert did not hear any note or cry; 

 but the natives described and imitated it, and according 

 to them it clucks much in the fashion of a common 

 domestic fowl, the cluck ending in a peacock -like scream. 

 He observed that the birds continued to lay from the end 

 of August to March,' when he left that part of the country, 

 and, if the natives are to be believed, an interval of only 

 four or five months, including the driest and hottest por- 

 tion of the year, occurs between their breeding seasons. 

 Mr. Gilbert remarks that the composition of the mound 

 seems to influence the colouring of a thin epidermis, with 

 which the eggs are invested, and which readily chips off, 

 showing the shell to be white. Thus eggs deposited in 

 a black soil are externally of a dark reddish brown; 

 those placed in sandy hillocks near the beach present a 



