168 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



Megajpodius, Talegallus, and Leipoa are most nearly allied 

 genera, forming part of a great family of birds, whose range 

 will be found to extend from the Philippines through the 

 islands of the Indian Archipelago to Australia. 



The Megapodius tumulus is rather numerously spread over 

 the whole of the Cobourg Peninsula on the north coast of the 

 Australian continent; future research will doubtless require 

 us to assign to it a much wider range, probably over many 

 of the islands lying off the east coast. 



The following account of its habits is taken from Gilbert's 

 notes ; and, novel and extraordinary as those of Talegallus 

 and Leipoa may have been considered, this will be read with 

 even greater interest : — 



" On my arrival at Port Essington my attention was 

 attracted to numerous immense mounds of earth, which were 

 pointed out to me by some of the residents as the tumuli of 

 the aborigines ; on the other hand, I was assured by the 

 natives that they were formed by the Megapode for the 

 purpose of incubating its eggs : their statement appeared so 

 extraordinary, and so much at variance with the general 

 habits of birds, that no one in the settlement believed them 

 or took sufficient interest in the matter to examine the 

 mounds, and thus to verify or refute their accounts ; another 

 circumstance which induced a doubt of their veracity was the 

 great size of the eggs brought in by the natives as those of 

 this bird. Aware that the eggs of Leipoa were hatched in a 

 similar manner, my attention was immediately arrested by 

 these accounts, and I at once determined to ascertain all I 

 possibly could respecting so singular a feature in the bird's 

 economy ; and, having procured the assistance of a very 

 intelligent native, who undertook to guide me to the different 

 places resorted to by the bird, I proceeded on the sixteenth 

 of November to Knocker's Bay, a part of Port Essington 

 Harbour comparatively but little known, and where I had 

 been informed a number of these birds were always to be 



