32 Wonders of the Bird World 



registered 38 to 40 C. and cooled but little during the 

 night, ' as the black sand absorbs very much heat and emits 

 little ' (' Reise der Gazelle,' iii. p. 253, 1889). But a much 

 more striking display of sagacity in the selection of breed- 

 ing-spots by the Moleo is recorded by the cousins, Drs. P. 

 and F. Sarazin, whose account we translate. In the Bone 

 Valley (about 750 feet) the naturalists came across ' a great 

 number of pits, which Moleo-fowls had dug .out in order to 

 lay their eggs there. Our people made a search, and we 

 secured, to our satisfaction, four new-laid eggs. In the same 

 bamboo-thicket, exactly on the spot where the numerous 

 Moleo-pits were scraped out, one against the other, like 

 wolf-pits, was a warm spring. The temperature of the 

 water must have been about 60 C. The circumstance that, 

 here in the mountains, where the temperature, especially in 

 the forest, is on the whole low, Moleo eggs laid simply in 

 the earth should come to full development, had puzzled us 

 here already, and led us to suspect a connection between 

 these diggings and the warm spring. Somewhat further on 

 our journey up to Bone Valley (about 1500 feet), we came 

 upon Moleo-diggings again, and, as in the last case, we dis- 

 covered not far from them a warm spring of perhaps 50 C., 

 which formed a little brook. Although on putting our 

 hands into it, a sharp smarting sensation of the skin between 

 the fingers resulted, all the stones of the brook were coated 

 with blue-green algae. With regard to the breeding of the 

 Moleos, therefore, we are able to maintain our opinion that 

 the bird indeed lays its eggs in the sand on the hot sea- 

 shore, where the heat of the sun then proves powerful 

 enough to hatch them, but that in the mountains, and 

 especially in the shady forest of the interior, for the warmth 

 of the sun must be substituted some other power, and 

 for this purpose the Moleo chooses the vicinity of warm- 

 water springs, which it searches out, and makes its breeding- 

 pits in the ground warmed by the hot springs. Accord- 



