RASORES. 175 



of vegetable matter, was situated upon the crest of the hill, 

 and measured 8 feet in height (or 13^ from the base of the 

 slope to the summit) and 77 feet in circumference. In this 

 mound, after several hours' hard digging into a well-packed 

 mass of earth, stones, decaying branches and leaves and other 

 vegetable matter, and the living roots of trees, we found nu- 

 merous fragments of eggs, besides one broken egg containing 

 a dead and putrid chick, and another whole one, which proved 

 to be addled. All were imbedded at a depth of six feet from 

 the nearest part of the surface, at which place the heat pro- 

 duced by the fermentation of the mass was considerable. The 

 egg, 3J by '2>\ inches, was dirty brown, covered with a kind 

 of epidermis, which easily chipped off, exposing a pure white 

 surface beneath. Another mound, situated at the foot of the 

 hill close to the beach, measured no less than 150 feet in cir- 

 cumference ; and to form this immense accumidation of mate- 

 rials the ground in the vicinity had been scraped quite bare 

 by the birds, and numerous shallow excavations pointed out 

 whence the materials had been derived. Its form was an 

 irregular oval, the flattened summit not being central as in 

 the first instance, but situated nearer the larger end, which 

 was elevated 14 feet from the ground, the slope measuring in 

 various directions 18, 21^, and 24 feet. At Port Lihou, in 

 a small bay a few miles to the westward, at Cape York and at 

 Port Essington, I found other mounds which were compara- 

 tively low, and appeared to have been dug into by the natives. 

 The great size the tumuli (which are probably the work of 

 several generations) have attained on Haggerston and Nogo 

 Islands arises doubtless from those places being seldom visited 

 by the aborigines. I found several eggs of large size in the 

 ovarium of a female shot in August, while the condition of the 

 oviduct showed that an egg had very recently passed ; hence 

 it is probable that, in spite of their great comparative size, one 

 bird lays several ; but whether each mound is resorted to by 

 more than one pair, I had not the means of ascertaining. 



