540 MEGAPODE 
and rotten wood.! This habit attracted attention more than three 
hundred years ago,? but the accounts given of it by various 
travellers were generally discredited by naturalists,? and as examples 
of the birds, probably from their unattractive plumage, appear not to 
have been brought to Europe, no one of them was seen by any 
ornithologist or scientifically described until near the end of the first 
1 Hence the name of MounD-BIRDs given to them by some writers. 
2 Antonio Pigafetta, one of the survivors of Magellan’s glorious but disastrous 
voyage, records in his journal, under date of April 1521, among the peculiarities 
of the Philippine, Islands, then first discovered by Europeans, the existence of a 
bird there, about the size of a Fowl, which laid its eggs, as big as a Duck’s, in 
the sand, and left them to be hatched by the heat of the sun (Primo Viaggio 
intorno al Globo, ed. Amoretti, Milano: 1800, p. 72; Fr. transl. Premier Voyage 
autour du Monde, Paris: A.R. ix. p. 88). More than one hundred years later 
the Jesuit Nieremberg, in his Historia Naturx, published at Antwerp in 1635, 
described (p. 207) a bird called ‘‘ Daie,” and by the natives named ‘‘ Tapun,” 
not larger than a Dove, which, with its tail (!) and feet, excavated a nest in 
sandy places and laid therein eggs bigger than those of a Goose. The publication 
at Rome in 1651 of Hernandez’s Hist. Avium Nove Hispaniz shews that his papers 
must have been accessible to Nieremberg, who took from them the passage just 
mentioned, but, as not unusual with him, misprinted the names which stand in 
Hernandez’s work (p. 56, cap. 220) ‘‘ Daic,” and ‘‘Tapum” respectively, and 
omitted his predecessor’s important addition ‘‘ Viuit in Philippicis.” Not long 
after, the Dominican Navarrete, a missionary to China, made a considerable 
stay in the Philippines, and returning to Europe in 1673 wrote an account of 
the Chinese empire, of which Churchill (Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. i.) 
gave an English translation in 1704. It is therein stated (p. 45) that in many 
of the islands of the Malay Archipelago ‘‘there is a very singular bird call’d 
Tabon,” and that ‘‘ What I and many more admire is, that it being no bigger in 
Body than an ordinary Chicken, tho’ long legg’d, yet it lays an egg larger than 
a Gooses, so that the egg is bigger than the bird itself. . . . In order to lay its 
Eggs, it digs in the Sand above a yard in depth; after laying, it fills up the 
hole and makes it even with the rest ; there the Eggs hatch with the heat of the 
Sun and Sand.” He adds further information which need not be quoted here. 
Gemelli Careri, who travelled from 1663 to 1699, and in the latter year published 
an account of his voyage round the world, gives similar evidence respecting this 
remarkable bird, which he calls ‘‘ Tavon,” in the Philippine Islands (Voy. du tour 
du Monde, ed. Paris: 1727, v. pp. 157, 158). The Megapode of Luzon is fairly 
described by Camel or Camelli in his observations on the Birds of the Philippines 
communicated by Petiver to the Royal Society in 1703 (Phil. Trans. xxiii. p. 
1398). In 1726 Valentyn published his elaborate work on the East Indies, 
wherein (deel iii. bk. v. chap. ii. p. 320) he very correctly describes the Megapode 
of Amboina under the name of Afoeleoe or Malleoe, and also a larger kind found 
in Celebes, so as to shew he had in the course of his long residence in the Dutch 
settlements become personally acquainted with both. 
3 Thus Willughby (Ornithologia, p. 297), or Ray for him, who had, however 
only Nieremberg’s evidence to cite, and they can scarcely be blamed for their 
hesitation, considering the number of other marvels narrated by the same worthy 
father. Buffon also (Oiseaux, ix. p. 486) was just as sceptical in regard to the 
relation of Careri. 
