GALLINACEOUS BIRDS. 



269 



" Arrived at our destination, we built a hut, and prepared for a stay of some days, I to shoot and 

 skin Maleos. The place is situated in the large bay between the islands of Limbe and Banca, and 

 consists of a steep beach more than a mile in length, of deep, loose, and coarse black volcanic sand, or 

 rather gravel, very fatiguing to walk over. It is in this loose black sand that those singular birds, 

 the Maleos, deposit their eggs. 



" Every year the natives come for fifty miles round to obtain these eggs, which are esteemed a 

 great delicacy, and when quite fresh are indeed delicious. They are richer than Hens' eggs, and of a 

 liner flavour, each one completely fills an ordinary tea-cup, and forms, with bread or rice, a very 



THE MALEO {Megacephalon Mako), ONE-FOURTH natural size. 



good meal. The colour of the shell is a pale brick-red, or very rarely pure white. They are elongate, 

 and very slightly smaller at one end, from four to four and a half inches long, by two and a quarter and 

 two and a half wide." 



After the eggs are deposited in the sand they are no further cared for by the modier. The young 

 birds on breaking the shell, work their way up through the sand, and run oft' at once to tlie forest. 

 "I was assured by Mr. Duivenfoden, of Ternate," says Wallace, "that they can fly the very day they 

 are hatched. He had taken some eggs on board his schooner which were hatched during the night, 

 and in the morning the little birds flew readily across the cabin. Considering the great distances the 

 hens come to deposit the eggs in a proper situation (often ten or fifteen miles), it seems extraordinary 

 that they should take no further care of them. It is, however, quite certain that they neither do nor 

 ran watch them. The eggs being deposited by a number of hens in succession in the same hole 

 would render it impossible for each to distmguish its own, and the food necessary (or such large birds, 



