The Zoologist — February, 1866. 57 



well-pacl^ed mass of earth, stones, decaying branches and leaves and 

 other vegetable matter, and the living roots of tree«, we found nume- 

 rous fragments of eggs, besides one broken egg containing a dead and 

 putrid chick, and another whole one which proved to be addled. All 

 were imbedded at a depth of six feet from the nearest part of the sur- 

 face, at which place the heat produced by the fermentation of the mass 

 was considerable. 



" ' The egg, 3^ by 2\ inches, was dirty brown, covered with a kind 

 of epidermis, which easily chipped of, exposing a pure white surface 

 beneath. Another mound, situated at the foot of the hill close to the 

 beach, measured no less than 150 feet in circumference ; and to form 

 this immense accumulation of materials the ground in the vicinity had 

 been scraped quite bare by the birds, and numerous shallow excava- 

 tions pointed out whence the materials had been derived. Its form 

 was an irregular oval, the flattened summit not being central as in the 

 first instance, bnt situated near the larger end, which was elevated 

 14 feet from the ground, the slope measuring, in various directions, 

 18, 21j and 24 f^et. At Port Lihou, in a small bay a itiw miles to the 

 westward, at Cape York and at Port Essington, I found other mounds, 

 which were comparatively low, and appeared to have been dug into 

 by the natives. The great size the tumuli (which are probably the 

 work of several generations) have attained on Haggerston and Nogo 

 Islands arises doubtless from those places being seldom visited by the 

 aborigines. I found several eggs of large size in the ovarium of a 

 female shot in August, while the condition of the oviduct showed that 

 an egg had very recently passed ; hence it is probable that, in spite of 

 their great comparative size, one bird lays several ; but whether each 

 mound is resorted to by more than one pair I had not the means of 

 ascertaining. Few birds are more wary and less easily procured thati 

 the Megapodius ; it inhabits the belts of ;brush along the coast, and 

 I never found the tumulus at a greater distance from the sea than a 

 iew hundred yards. When disturbed, it seldom rises at once, unless 

 on the margin of a thicket, but runs off" to some distance and then takes 

 to wing, flying heavily, but without any of the whirring noise of the 

 true Gallinaceae. It seldom takes a long flight, and usually perches 

 on a tree, remaining there in a crouching attitude with outstretched 

 neck, but flying off again upon observing any motion made by its 

 pursuer; and it is only bv cautiously sneaking up under cover of the 

 largest trees that it can be approached within gun-shot. As an example 



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