704 Mr. Edwin Ashby on the [Ibis, 



every loose twig and leaf seemed to have been gathered 

 together and formed into a mound of fermenting material 

 equal to several dray-loads. I have watched the male bird 

 doing this work, taking several, shall I say, handfuls of 

 debris and throwing it backwards until by successive efforts 

 it has reached the spot chosen for the mound. 



In the moist warm conditions of that forest, fermentation 

 quickly commences and accumulated material rapidly 

 generates heat. 



We went through the mound in question and found that 

 it was too fresh for the deposition of eggs ; the temperature 

 must have been very high — indeed, so hot that the eggs, if 

 placed in it, would have been almost, if not quite, cooked. 

 One cannot help asking how and by what means do the birds 

 know when the temperature is right for their purpose. 



The Scrub-Turkey evidently has some knowledge of the 

 conditions that are necessary for satisfactory incubation, and 

 refrains from placing its eggs in the nesting-mound until 

 this is reached. This suggests a rather high order of 

 intelligence. 



Leipoa ocellata Gould. The Malh^e-Fowl. 



This fine bird inhabits almost exclusively the vast tracts of 

 the drier parts of Australia which are covered with the 

 various species of the dwarf branching forms of Eucalypti 

 known as Mallee. 



All opportunities that I have personally had of examining 

 the nesting-mounds of this bird have been in the extensive 

 belt of Mallee lying on both sides of the valley of the River 

 Murray in South Australia. 



The birds usually select a sandy rise and commence the 

 nesting-mound by excavating a hole — in the case of the 

 one I examined in this stage, situated about fifteen miles from 

 the town of Mannum, the excavation was about eighteen 

 inches deep and six feet or more across. For some reason 

 the birds had forsaken this spot at this stage and made the 

 nesting-mound on another sandy rise some distance away. 



In reference to the digging of the hole for the foundation 



