THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 161 



cockroaches were also numerous. We were up at daylight next 

 morning and saw the tail end of a flight of Flying Foxes returning 

 to their camp, also the pigeons returning to the mainland. We 

 , found the island was apparently a hilltop, about 400 feet high, 

 and rising abruptly from the water with steep rocky cliffs. All 

 round the water line are huge broken boulders and large fissures 

 , and caves in the rocks of the island, looking as if volcanic action 

 had been rampant in years gone by. The whole island is 

 'covered with dense scrub from the water's edge to the summit ; 

 some of the cliffs are covered with masses of ferns and in the 

 sheltered hollows grows the Screw Palm (Pandanus) ; on the top 

 Ficus and other trees grow, but mosdy tangled together with the 

 Lawyer Vine and other creepers, making it most difficult to force 

 one's way through, and impossible to go quietly enough not to 

 disturb the birds. Most of the trees and shrubs are fruit-bearing 

 and the ground more or less covered with fallen seeds and fruit. 

 The Bird's-nest Ferns are plentiful and attain a very large size. 

 A few of the shrubs and creepers were in flower, but we saw very 

 •few butterflies or beetles, it being probably too early for therrw 

 We soon commenced our scramble over the island, and in the 

 .scrub, just behind our humpy, we saw a pair of the Victoria Rifle 

 Birds and not far from them was a fair-sized nest made of grass 

 in a small tree. Our hopes rose high, as one of the objects in 

 visiting these islands was to try and find the hitherto undescribed 

 nest and egg of this beautiful bird. One of us carefully climbed 

 up to the nest, but found that it belonged to a Torres Straits 

 Pigeon, and we soon found that those birds were breeding all 

 over the island. They seem to build anywhere — high up in the 

 trees, low down on the vines, and occasionally on the rocks or in 

 the Bird's-nest Ferns growing on the ground. The nests 

 vary in size from a light structure composed of a few sticks 

 to large bulky ones built of twigs with the green leaves left 

 on. The only pigeons that seem to remain on the island during 

 •the day are the hen birds which were either sitting or attending 

 to their young. We found eggs, one only in each nest, in 

 all stages of incubation, and also young birds. We reached the 

 top of the island after a difficult climb, frequently having to 

 crawl under masses of vine and tangled brushwood, and often 

 disturbing colonies of green-headed and other ants, and they 

 made the most of their opportunity in attacking us, the bite 

 being very painful. At the summit we found the ground a 

 little more clear of undergrowth, and there came upon a large 

 mound of the Megapode ; it was 7 feet in diameter and 3 feet 6 

 inches high in the centre, and contained about three cartloads of 

 earth, leaves, and sticks. We were soon on our hands and knees 

 scraping it out, but only found three fresh eggs ; the temperature 

 was 94 degrees, and the nest had evidently been used for some 



