260 BACKBONED ANIMALS. 
bles our common turkey, though smaller, being only two 
and a half feet long. It is found in New South Wales, and 
is remarkable for its method of hatching its eggs. 
The ocellated leipoa (Leipoa ocellata) of western Aus- 
tralia forms a mound of fine iron-stone gravel, mixed with 
vegetable matter, forty-five feet in circumference and near- 
ly five feet high, the heat developed in the interior being 
Fic. 295.—Brush-turkeys and their egg-mounds. 
pyramidal form four feet in height, the leaves being grasped in the 
claws and hurled backward, as shown in Fig. 295. The mass soon fer- 
ments, producing heat, and in it the white eggs are buried, fifteen 
inches deep, in a circle, the large end upward, and from nine to twelve 
inches apart, an opening being left in the center to govern the tem- 
perature of the mound, the birds also exposing the eggs on warm days. 
The young are hatched in thirty days, remaining in the mound twelve 
hours after being hatched. On the second night they return to the 
mound, and are partly covered by the male, the next day being able to 
fly and remain with the parents. 
