MEGAPODE 541 
quarter of the present century. The first member of the Family 
to receive authoritative recognition was one of the largest, inhabiting 
the continent of Australia, where it is known as the BRUSH-TURKEY, 
and was originally described by Latham in 1821 under the name 
of the New-Holland Vulture, a misleading designation which he 
subsequently tried to correct on perceiving its Galline character. 
It is the Talegallus lathami of modern ornithologists, and is nearly 
the size of a hen Turkey. Six smaller species of the same genus 
have since been described, all from New Guinea or the neighbouring 
islands, but two of them, 7. pyrrhopygius and T. bruyni, have been 
separated to form a group A%pypodius. The Australian bird is of 
a sooty-brown colour, relieved beneath by the lighter edging of 
some of the feathers, but the head and neck are nearly bare, beset 
with fine bristles, the skin being of a deep pinkish-red, passing above 
the breast into a large wattle of bright yellow. The tail is commonly 
carried upright and partly folded, something like that of a domestic 
Fowl. 
The next form of which we may speak is another inhabitant of 
Australia, commonly known in England as the MALLEE-BIRD, but 
to the colonists as Lowan and “ Native Pheasant ”—the Lipoa ocellata 
first described by Gould (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1840, p. 126), which has 
much shorter tarsi and toes, the head entirely clothed, and the tail 
expanded. Its plumage presents a pleasing combination of greys 
and browns of various tints, interspersed with black, white, and buff, 
the wing-coverts and feathers of the back bearing each near the tip an 
oval or subcircular patch, whence the trivial scientific name of the bird 
is given, while a stripe of black feathers with a median line of white 
extends down the front of the throat, from the chin to the breast. 
There is but one species of this genus known, as is also the case with 
the next to be mentioned, which is a singular bird long known to in- 
habit Celebes, but not fully described until 1846,! when it received 
from Salomon Miiller (Arch. 7. Naturgesch. xii. pt. 1, p. 116) the 
_ name of Macrocephalon maleo, but, being shortly afterwards figured 
by Gray and Mitchell (Gen. Birds, iii. pl. 123) under the generic 
term of Megacephalon, has since commonly borne the latter appellation. 
This is a very remarkable form, bearing a helmet-like protuberance 
on the back of its head, all of which as well as the neck is bare and 
of a bright red colour; the plumage of the body is glossy black 
above, and beneath roseate-white. 
Of the Megapodes proper, constituting the genus Megapodius, 
many species have been described, but authorities are greatly at 
variance as to the validity of several, and here it would be impossible 
to name all that have been supposed to exist. Some are only 
1 As we have seen, it was mentioned in 1726 by Valentyn, and a young example 
was in 1830 described and figured by Quoy and Gaimard (Voy. ‘Astrolabe’: Oiseauz, 
p. 239, pl. 25) as the Megapodius rubripes of Temminck, a wholly different bird. 
