GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY. 31 



over 20 feet in length. As originally described by the late Sir Richard Owen, this 

 huge monitor was accredited with having been armed with horns and spikes of the 

 same character, and bearing the same proportion to the creature's body, as those of the 

 little spiny lizards, Moloch horndus, illustrated and described at length in Chapter III. 

 Had that interpretation been correct, this reptile in the flesh would have undoubtedly 

 represented one of the most formidable monsters that ever trod the earth. The 

 acquisition of further material, however, has demonstrated that the fossil remains of 

 two very distinct reptilian types had been obtained from the same source, and that, 

 while a huge monitor, for which the name of Megalania has been retained, undoubtedly 

 existed, the horned head and tail cuirass, previously supposed to have belonged to the 

 lizard, were the property of a large species of turtle. Upon this Chelonian the name 

 of Miolania Qweni has been since conferred by Mr. Smith Woodward, of the Geological 

 Department of the British Museum. 



Reference has been previously made in this Chapter to those bird species to 

 whom special importance is attached, with allusion to the peculiar distribution of either 

 themselves or their allies. Apart from these considerations, there are many forms which 

 are of high interest, regarded from the point of view that they are strictly and 

 exclusively Australasian. The Emu, as one of those forms, has already received 

 notice with reference to the suggestive testimony afforded by the surviving allies of 

 the same Struthious order. 



A little group of birds that is most essentially Australasian, and probably 

 represents a very primitive stock, is that of the Mound-builders or Megapodidae. There 

 are three distinct generic types belonging to this family group, all of which agree with 

 one another in their very remarkable habit of constructing huge mounds of earth, 

 leaves and other vegetable substances, within which they deposit their eggs and then 

 leave them to be hatched out by the natural heat generated by the decaying matrix. 

 Of the three known species, the Megapodium or Australian Jungle Fowl, Megapodium 

 tumulus, is abundant in the coastal districts of Northern Queensland and South 

 Australia, and also in New Guinea and the intervening islands of Torres Straits. This 

 Megapodium is a plain-looking bird, of mixed grey and brown hues, about the size of 

 a small fowl, and remarkable for the apparently disproportionate dimensions of its 

 thick legs and feet. It is with these abnormally large but most serviceable feet that 

 the birds collect together the materials of their mound-like nests, which may be as 

 much as fifteen feet high and sixty feet in circumference. A characteristic photo- 

 graph of one of the nest mounds of this species, taken by the author at Goode 



