230 ANOMALOUS INCUBATION. 



themselves, chasing each other through the avenue with the 

 greatest glee aud animation, and evidently enjoying the sport. 

 The male bird more especially piits himself into a variety of 

 attitudes, setting his feathers in the most grotesque mauner, and 

 making as many bows as an ancient cavalier in a minuet. But 

 what is still more curious, perhaps, as exhibiting an instinct 

 rarely, if in any other case, observable amongst the lower animals, 

 is, that the birds take great pains to beautify and adorn their 

 bowers, inserting amongst the twigs the gaudiest feathers of the 

 parrot and other birds, and spreading about the platform such 

 conspicuous objects as bleached bones and the shells of snails. 



Another Australian bird of great interest in this aviary is the 

 Wattled Talegalla (Talegalla Lathami), the Brush Turkey of 

 the colonists, which hatches its eggs, not by the ordinary process 

 of incubation, but by placing them in heaps of decaying vegetable 

 matter, and allowing them to remain there undisturbed till 

 brought to maturity by the heat engendered in the process of 

 decomposition. The Talegalla is a gregarious bird, moving about 

 in small companies, much after the manner of our common 

 poultry ; and in the construction of the heaps or mounds, which 

 are of great size, and a pyramidal form, several birds appear to 

 unite their labour. In collecting the materials the birds never 

 use the bill, but grasping a quantity with one foot, throw it 

 back towards the spot where the mound is being formed, and 

 thus make a perfect clearance for some distance around. Some 

 little time is allowed to elapse for the development of heat after 

 the mound is completed, and then the eggs are deposited a few 

 inches distant from each other, and buried between one and two 

 feet deep in the substance of the mound. As soon as the 

 chicken leaves the shell, it excavates a way to light by means of 

 its strong and well-developed feet, when the mother bird, guided 

 by unerring instinct to await this moment, receives her young, 

 and commences the actual duties of parental care. 



The first account of the habits of the Talegalla was given by 

 Mr. Gould in his " Birds of Australia," published in 1842 ; but 

 so extraordinary was the story that, notwithstanding his high 

 authority, it was received with considerable doubt and hesitation. 

 In 1854, however, the entire process of mound-raising, egg- 

 deposition, and hatching was gone through in the Zoological 

 Gardens by a pair of Brush Turkeys which had some time pre- 



