20 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
ference. It is stated that this was not the work of one 
season, but that fresh material was added each spring before 
a fresh laying took place. The Megapodius is a bird no 
bigger than an ordinary fowl; but the Australian brush- 
turkey (Tallegallus Lathami) is nearly as big as a turkey. I 
have had the advantage of seeing these birds and examining 
their work in the Duke of Bedford’s woods at Woburn 
Abbey. Mr Savile-Kent speaks of the Tallegallus as nesting 
co-operatively ; but the four or five mounds which I saw at 
Woburn seemed each to be appropriated to a separate pair. 
Having piled together a mass of vegetable matter, the hen 
lays her eggs therein, which are then buried in fresh material, 
and left to be hatched by the heat engendered by fermentation 
of the decaying leaves. | Nor does she lay them in the 
ordinary sense of the word, on-their sides. If she did, and 
neglected to turn them every day, they would assuredly be 
addled. Forasmuch as she has not the faintest intention of 
re-visiting the eggs, they are contrived of a peculiar elon- 
gated shape, like a soda-water bottle without the neck, and 
are set on end in the material of the mound. The chicks are 
hatched in due time, and are often so fully fledged on escaping 
from the shell as to be able to take flight at once and are 
able to find without guidance the food suitable for their needs. 
Hence there is no more possibility of the young birds acting 
upon instruction or in imitation of their parents than there is 
in the case of young spiders, seeing that the old birds evade 
the labour of personal incubation and guidance of the chicks. 
“ Yet,” says Mr Savile-Kent, ‘‘ the mound-constructing in- 
stinct is so strongly ingrained by heredity that young birds 
taken fresh from the nest and confined under favourable 
conditions have at once commenced to construct mounds after 
the characteristic manner of their tribe.’’* In doing so, no 
doubt these young and inexperienced creatures are acting — 
under a stimulus communicated from the lower brain centres 
along the efferent nerves to legs and feet congenitally de- 
veloped and highly specialised for a peculiar function. So 
far the birds may be regarded as unconsciously exercising 
4 The Naturalist in Australia, page 338. 
