8 



Bird - Lore 



size, being about four or five feet high; but laying had not commenced. 

 While waiting in ambush for Rifle Birds (Birds of Paradise), Scrub 

 Fowls would frequently pass close by me, running over the ground through 

 the scrub. The Scrub Fowl, although the smallest of the three mound- 

 building birds, raises by far the largest mound. The largest, according 

 to the dimensions (maximum diameter fifty feet, height fifteen feet) 

 furnished by Gilbert and Macgillfvray, must have contained nearly nine 

 thousand cubic feet of matter. Into these immense heaps the Scrub Hen 

 appears to burrow for from six to sixty inches, according to circum- 

 stances, to deposit her egg — not like the Mallee Hen and the female 

 Scrub Turkey, which open up their mounds for that purpose. 



The beautiful buff -tinted eggs most resemble those of the Mallee 

 Fowl, but are slightly smaller, the shell being extremely thin and fragile. 

 It is said that only one pair of birds frequent the same mound (a point 

 by no means settled), and that the complement of eggs to a clutch is 

 eight or ten. The temperature of Megapode mounds has been registered 

 at ninety-four or ninety-five degrees, or about the same as that recorded 

 for the other species of egg-mounds. 



EGG- MOUND OF THE SCRUB FOWL {Megopodius) 

 From a photograph, by D. Le Souef 



