RASORES. * 157 



obliged to cooey, to prevent our straying from each other ; 

 this thicket is again shadowed by a very curious species of 

 dwarf Eucalyptus bearing yellow blossoms, and growing from 

 fifteen to thirty feet in height, known to the native as the 

 spear-wood, and of which they make their spears, digging- 

 sticks, dowaks, &c. ; the whole formation is a fine reddish 

 ironstone gravel, and this the Leipoa scratches up from several 

 yards around, and thus forms its mound, to be afterwards 

 converted into a hot-bed for the reproduction of its offspring. 

 The interior of the mound is composed of the finer particles 

 of the gravel mixed with vegetable matter, the fermentation 

 of which produces a warmth sufficient for the purpose of 

 hatching. Mr. Drummond, who had been for years accus- 

 tomed to hot-beds in England, gave it as his opinion that the 

 heat around the eggs was about 89°. In both the nests with eggs 

 the White Ant was very numerous, making its little covered 

 galleries of earth around and attached to the shell, thus 

 showing a beautiful provision of Nature in preparing the 

 necessary tender food for the young bird on its emergence ; 

 one of the eggs I have preserved shows the White Ants' tracks 

 most beautifully ; the largest mound I saw, and which ap- 

 peared as if in a state of preparation for eggs, measured forty- 

 five feet in circumference, and if rounded in proportion on the 

 top would have been full five feet in height. I remarked in 

 all the mounds not ready for the reception of eggs the inside 

 or vegetable portion was always wet and cold, and I imagine, 

 from the state of others, that the bird turns out the whole of 

 the materials to dry before depositing its eggs and covering 

 them up with the soil ; in both cases where I found eggs the 

 upper part of the mound was perfectly and smoothly rounded 

 over, so that any one passing it without knowing the singular 

 habit of the bird might very readily suppose it to be an ant-hill: 

 mounds in this state always contain eggs within, while those 

 without eggs are not only not rounded over, but have the 

 centres so scooped out that they form a hollow. The eggs 



