MOUND BIRDS. 
223 
ming-birds in its gorgeous plumage. The guinea-hen is 
an African bird. To this group belong the curious mound 
birds. 
The mound-birds, says Wallace, are a small family of 
birds, some of them smaller than a hen, found chiefly in 
Australia and the surrounding islands, and extending as 
far as the Philippines and northwest Borneo. They are 
allied to the gallinaceous birds, but differ from these and 
from all others in never sitting upon their eggs, which they 
Fig. 264.— Calif ornian Plumed Partridge. 
bury in sand^ earth, or rubbish, and leave to be hatched by 
the heat of the sun or of fermentation. They are all char- 
acterized by very large feet and long curved claws, and 
most of the species of Megapodhts rake and scratch together 
all kinds of rubbish, dead leaves, sticks, stones, earth, rot- 
ten wood, etc., till they form a large mound, often six feet 
high and twelve feet across, in the middle of which they 
bury their eggs. A number of birds are said to join in mak- 
ing these mounds and to lay their eggs together, so that forty 
or fifty eggs may be found. Allied to the mound-birds is 
the maleo {^Megacephalon ruhHpes), They scratch holes in 
