THE NICOBAR MEGAPODE. 121 



a very old one, for from near its centre grew a tree about six 

 inches in diameter, whose roots penetrated the mound in all 

 directions to within a foot of its summit, some of them being 

 nearly as thick as a man's wrist. I had this mound dug away 

 almost to the level of the surrounding land, but only got three 

 eggs from it, one quite fresh, and two in which the chicks were 

 somewhat developed. 



" Off this mound I shot a Megapode, which had evidently 

 only just laid an egg. I dissected it, and from a careful exami- 

 nation it would seem that the eggs are laid at long intervals 

 apart, for the largest egg in the ovary was only about the size 

 of a large pea, and the next in size about as big as a small pea. 

 These mounds are also used by reptiles, for out of one I dug, 

 besides the Megapode's eggs, about a dozen eggs of some large 

 lizard. 



" I made careful enquiries among the natives about these 

 birds, and from them I learnt that they usually get four or five 

 eggs from a mound, but sometimes they get as many as ten ; 

 they all assert that only one pair of birds are concerned in the 

 making of a mound, and that they only work at night. When 

 newly made, the mounds (so I was informed) are small, but are 

 gradually enlarged by the birds. The natives never dig a mound 

 away, but they probe it with a stick or with the end of their 

 daos, and when they find a spot where the stick sinks in easily, 

 they scoop out the sand with their hands, generally, though not 

 always, filling in the holes again after they have abstracted the 

 eggs. The Nicobarese and the Malay and Burmese traders 

 take numbers of these eggs, which they generally cook by 

 placing them in hot ashes ; but they also sometimes boil them 

 quite hard, and they do not seem to be very particular whether 

 the eg£ is fresh or contains a chicken in a more or less advan- 



OCT 



ced stage of development. The Nicobarese, at any rate, appear 

 to relish a boiled or roasted chicken out of the egg quite as 

 much as they do a fresh egg. 



"The eggs are usually buried from 3 \ to 4 feet deep, and how 

 the young manage to extricate themselves from the superincum- 

 bent mass of soil and rubbish, seems a mystery. I could not obtain 

 any information from natives on this point, but most probably 

 they are assisted by their parents, if not entirely freed by them, 

 for these latter, so the natives affirm, are always to be found in 

 the vicinity of the mounds where their eggs are deposited. 



" The surface soil of the mounds only is dry ; at about a foot 

 from the surface, the sand feels slightly damp and cold, but as 

 the depth increases the sand gets damper but at the same time 

 increases in warmth." 



I, myself, saw a considerable number of these mounds, chiefly 

 at Galatea Bay, and there I examined some of them very 

 minutely. These were situated just inside the dense jungle 

 which commences at springtide high-water mark. It appeared 



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