DIGGING FOR EGGS 



each pit, and that as soon as it is laid they fill up the hole 

 level with the surface. It is always possible to tell whether 

 a megapode has lately been excavating by examining the 

 soil and thrusting a stick into it ; the looser the earth, the 

 more easily the stick penetrates, and the more recently has 

 the mound been opened. It requires some skill and a great 

 deal of patience to get at the eggs. The natives burrow 

 away with their hands, making a hole just large enough to 

 crawl into, and throwing out the sand or earth between their 

 legs. Their endurance is sometimes severely tried, for it 

 may happen that they dig for six or seven feet without 

 coming upon a single egg, suffering terribly meanwhile from 

 the bites of myriads of sand flies and mosquitoes. 



The eggs are about three and a half inches long, and are 

 placed upright on the thin end. The shell itself is white, 

 but it is covered with a kind of thin skin which becomes 

 stained by the materials in which it is buried, so that eggs 

 taken from the sandy hillocks on the seashore are a dirty 

 yellowish white in colour, while those from the black-earth 

 mounds are of a darker reddish-brown tint. The natives 

 say that they are laid between sunset and sunrise, at intervals 

 of a few days. 



'33 



