70 TILANCHONG 



difference in the appearance of the sexes, but these were a pair, 

 and it is therefore evident that when the hen is about to deposit 

 the egg, the male assists in excavating the hole in which it is 

 to be buried for incubation. The mound on which they were 

 busy was between 7 and 8 feet high, and rather more than 

 100 feet in circumference, and had a large coco palm grow- 

 ing through the centre. It would certainly be the work of 

 a number of birds, and must have taken many years to 

 build." 



We got four more megapodes on February i, one of them 

 containing an unbroken egg of a size remarkable for so small 

 a bird ; it measured 3f inches by 2-^\ inches.* The shell is very 

 thick, and when new of a pinkish colour, which changes in the 

 earth to a dirty buff. The temperature of a nest-mound, which 

 we dug into without success in a search for eggs, rapidly increased 

 towards the centre : it was composed of light sandy soil, with 

 apparently no addition of leaves or grass other than that lying 

 about on the earth employed by the birds ; the species does not 

 seem purposely to include vegetable matter for causing heat by 

 fermentation. 



We failed, whilst here, to obtain a single specimen of a rat ; 

 the island is much cut up with holes, high and low, but they are 

 those of crabs, who here also — as on Barren Island and in Kar 

 Nicobar — made off with our baits, leaving behind in some of the 

 traps a quarry we did not at all desire. The only mammal obtained 

 was a large fruit - bat {^Pteropiis nicobaricus), of which Abbott 

 found a camp up the stream and shot several for specimens. 

 Tracks of pig were seen. 



The island is uninhabited, and seems to have been in the 

 same state for some time. In Hamilton's Voyages some account 

 is given of the adventures of a shipwrecked crew, whose vessel, 

 commanded by a Captain Owen, was lost there in 1708. They 

 found the place unpeopled, and, making fires in the night, were 



* " I once weighed one of these birds and found it to be only six times 

 greater than its own &%g ; whereas I found that a domestic hen weighs twenty- 

 two times as much as its own t.<g^P — E. H. Man. 



