392 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



THE 



Al.LEE HENS NEST. 



a perfect jungle, interweaving their sombre foliage overhead, and having their stems 

 interlaced at times by a species of wild vine, or liana, as supple as cordage when it is 

 twining around them, and as rigid as a wire cable when it has got them well within its 

 grip. Lowan, in which Mount Arapiles is situated, takes its name from a native bird, 

 also variously entitled the brush turkey, the malice pheasant and the malice hen, the 



Megapodus Tumulus of 

 naturalists. It is some- 

 what larger than a 

 good-sized fowl, and it 

 lays its eggs, which are 

 disproportionally large, 

 in an artificial mound 

 constructed by the co- 

 operation of many pairs 

 of birds, by whom they 

 are annually enlarged 

 and repaired. Some 

 of these tnmnli are 

 fifteen feet high, with 

 a like circumference ; 

 but a larger one when 

 measured was found to 



be no less than fifty yards round its base. They are entered by a funnel-like cavity 

 at the top, and the eggs are laid six feet below the surface, each hen depositing one 

 in a cavity twenty inches from its neighbours, and then covering it with soil and care- 

 fully smoothing over the surface. The eggs are placed vertically, are laid during the 

 night at intervals of several days, and are about the size of those of a goose. They are 

 hatched by the heat of the soil in which they are placed ; but the malice hen is so 

 shy, and at the same time so vigilant, that it is difficult to say whether the parent 

 birds assist their young in escaping from the grave in which the eggs have been buried. 



LAKES. 



There are not less than a hundred lakes in Victoria, although many of them are of 

 so limited an area, covering from two hundred to five hundred acres only, as scarcely 

 to entitle them to such a designation. About twenty of them are salt and these include 

 some of the largest while there are eight or ten whose waters are decidedly brackish. 

 Some of these appear to be the relics of an inland sea, while others have been 

 rendered saline by the reception of the salts washed into them from the soil of the 

 land they drain. Elsewhere the craters of extinct volcanoes have been transformed into 

 natural reservoirs, as remarkable for their depth as for their transparency and beauty of 

 colour. There are only three lake-systems so called that in South Gippsland, that in 

 the counties of Granville, Hampden and Polwarth, and that to which Lakes Hindmarsh 

 and Albacutya belong. The most remarkable of the whole is the one first mentioned ; 

 it comprises Lake Wellington, Lake Victoria and Lake King, although the two latter 



