chap, x.] MOUND-MAKING BIRDS. 243 



hills were covered with a dense scrubby bush of bamboos 

 and prickly trees and shrubs, the plains were adorned with 

 hundreds of noble palm-trees, and in many places with 

 a luxuriant shrubby vegetation. Birds were plentiful and 

 very interesting, and I now saw for the first time many 

 Australian forms that are quite absent from the islands 

 westward. Small white cockatoos were abundant, and 

 their loud screams, conspicuous white colour, and pretty 

 yellow crests, rendered them a very important feature in 

 the landscape. This is the most westerly point on the 

 globe where any of the family are to be found. Some 

 small honeysuckers of the genus Ptilotis, and the strange 

 mound-maker (Megapodius gouldii), are also here first 

 met with on the traveller's journey eastward. The last- 

 mentioned bird requires a fuller notice. 



The Megapodidae are a small family of birds found only 

 in Australia and the surrounding islands, but extending as 

 far as the Philippines and North-west Borneo. They are 

 allied to the gallinaceous birds, but differ from these and 

 from all others in never sitting upon their eggs, which they 

 bury in sand, earth, or rubbish, and leave to be hatched by 

 the heat of the sun or of fermentation. They are all 

 characterised by very large feet and long curved claws, 

 and most of the species of Megapodius rake and scratch 

 together all kinds of rubbish, dead leaves, sticks, stones, 

 earth, rotten wood, &c, till they form a large mound, often 



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