356 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



the greatest caution. Like the gallinaceous birds, to which thev 

 bear a strong resemblance, they are fond of scratching large holes 

 in sandy soil, sometimes making them nearly a yard in width and 

 eighteen or twenty inches in depth. 



In the " corroboring" places, as the natives call them, the Lyre 

 Bird is mostly to be found, and the experienced hunter always 

 watches for the disappearance of the bird into the hole to make 

 his advance. Every now and then it jumps out of the hole, and 

 struts about, mocking with wonderful facility the notes of various 

 other birds, and even imitating precisely those of the laughing 

 jackass. It has, however, a very sweet and powerful note of its 

 own. Each bird makes three or four of these corroboring places, 

 sometimes at a distance of three or four hundred yards from each 

 other. 



Dr. Stephenson thinks that the corroboring places are not mere- 

 ly made for amusement, but that they are used as traps, in which 

 are caught sundry beetles and other insects, which fall into the 

 pits and can not get out again. In fact, should this theory be 

 true, the Lyre Bird and the ant-lion have a similar method of 

 trapping their prey in sandy pitfalls, though the former is a bird 

 and the latter an immature insect. 



Our last example of the Building Birds will be the well-known 

 Bower Bird of Australia (Ptilonorhyncluis holosericeus). 



Perhaps the whole range of ornithology does not produce a 

 more singular phenomenon than the fact of a bird building a house 

 merely for amusement, and decorating it with brilliant objects as 

 if to mark its destination. Such a proceeding marks a great prog- 

 ress in civilization, even among human races. The savage, pure 

 and simple, has no notion of undergoing more labor than can be 

 avoided, and thinks that setting his wives to build a hut is quite 

 as much labor as he chooses to endure. 



The native Australians have no places of amusement. They 

 will certainly dance their corrobory in one part of the forest in 

 preference to another, but merely because the spot happens to be 

 suitable without the expenditure of manual labor. The Bushman 

 has no place of resort, neither has the much farther advanced Zulu 

 Kafir. Even the New^ Zealander, who is the most favorable ex- 

 ample of a savage, does not erect a building merely for the pur- 

 pose of amusement, and would perhaps fail to comprehend that 

 such an edifice could be needed. Such a task is left to the civil- 



