54 The Zoologist — February, 1866. 



tional reward T inducerl him to make another effort: this seventh trial 

 proved successful, and my gratification was complete, when the native 

 with equal pride and satisfaction held up an egg, and after two or three 

 more attempts produced a second, thus proving how cautious Euro- 

 peans should be of disregarding the narratives of these poor children 

 of nature, because they happen to sound extraordinary or different 

 from anything with which tliey were previously acquainted. I re- 

 visited Knocker's Bay on the lOih of February, and having with some 

 difficulty penetrated into a dense thicket of cane-like creeping plants, 

 I suddenly found myself beside a mound of gigantic proportions. It 

 was fifteen feet in height and sixty in circumference at tlie base, the 

 upper part being about a third less, and was entirely composed of the 

 richest description of light vegetable mould ; on the top were very 

 recent marks of the bird's feet. The native and myself immediately 

 set to work, and, after an hour's extreme labour, rendered the more 

 fatiguing from the excessive heat, and the tormenling myriads of 

 mosquitoes and sand-flies, I succeeded in olitainiug an egg fioui a 

 depth of about five feet; it was in a perpendicular jjosition, with the 

 earth surrounding and very lightly touching it on all sides, and without 

 any other material to impart warmth, which, in fact, did not appear 

 necessary, the mound being quite warm lo the hands. The holes in 

 this mound coumiented at the outer edge of the summit, and ran down 

 obliquely towards the centre ; their diiection, therefore, is not uniform. 

 Like the majority of the mounds 1 have seen, this was So enveloped in 

 thickly foliaged trees as to preclude the possibility of the sun's rays 

 reaching any j)art of it. The mounds differ very much iu their com- 

 position, form and situation ; most of those that are placed near the 

 water's edge were formed of sand and shells, without a vestige of any 

 other material, but in some of them 1 met with a portion of soil and 

 decaying wood : when constructed of this loose material, they are very 

 irregular in outline, and often resemble a bank thrown up by a con- 

 stant heavy surf. One remarkable specimen of this description, situated 

 on the southern side of Knocker's Bay, has the appearance of a bank, 

 from twenty-five to thirty feet in length, with an average height of five 

 feet ; another even more singular is situated at the head of llie harbour, 

 and is composed entirely of pebbly iron-stone, resembling a confused 

 heap of sifted gravel ; into this I dug to the depth of two or three feet, 

 without finding any change of character; it may have been conical 

 originally, but is now without any regularity, and is very extensive, 

 covering a space of at least a hundred and fifty feet in circumference. 



