REPRODUCTION— CARE OF THE OFFSPRING 219 



less, and was entirely composed of the richest description 

 of light vegetable mould : on the top were very recent marks 

 of the birds' feet. The native and myself . . . after an hour's 

 work . . . succeeded in obtaining an egg from a depth of about 

 five feet ; it was in a perpendicular position, with the earth 

 very lightly touching it on all sides, and without any other 

 material to impart warmth, which indeed did not appear neces- 

 sary, the mound being quite warm to the hands. The holes 

 in this mound commenced at the outer edge of the summit, 

 and ran obliquely towards the centre : their direction tWere — ■ — 

 fore is not uniform. Like the majority of mounds I have seen 

 this was so thickly enveloped in foliaged trees as to preclude 

 the possibility of the sun's rays reaching any part of it. . . . 

 The mounds are doubtless the work of many years, and of many 

 birds in succession : some of them are evidently very ancient, 

 trees being often seen growing from their sides : in one instance 

 I found a tree growing from the middle of a mound which was 

 a foot in diameter. . . . The natives say that only a single 

 pair of birds are ever found at one mound at a time. . . . They 

 also affirm that the eggs are deposited at night, at intervals of 

 several days." 



Concerning the significance of this remarkable habit of 

 incubation we have elsewhere commented (p. 248), but we may 

 remark here that the vertical position of the egg is somewhat 

 curious. All who have examined such mounds agree in that 

 this is the universal position of these eggs, and interesting 

 testimony of the accuracy of these observations was obtained 

 during 1904 at the Zoological Gardens in London, where a pair 

 of Brush-turkeys {Talegalla lathami) built a perfectly typical 

 mound, and from which in due time young emerged. From 

 observations made on this mound, it seems probable that the 

 young do not force their way until about thirty-six hours after 

 hatching, the chicks remaining within the shattered shell until 

 sufficiently strong to make the necessary efforts to escape from 

 this living tomb. 



Either the dread of man is much greater in some birds than 

 others, or they have less of that mysterious love for their off- 

 spring which, in some birds, as among the human species, 

 amounts to an overmastering passion. For while some species 

 forsake their eggs on the slightest of pretexts afforded them by 



