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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
pyramidal form. It appears to be the united work of many 
pairs of birds, and the same site is used by them for several 
successive years. The Talegalla uses its foot for this work, 
and when sufficient is accumulated, the eggs are deposited 
about a foot apart from each other, and buried about two feet 
deep, perfectly upright, with the large end Upwards ; and 
there they are left, as in an artificial incubator, till they 
are hatched, when, it appears, that the chicks force their 
way out without assistance. The natives collect as many as 
a bushel of eggs from a single mound, and they are much 
souo-lit after on account of their delicious flavour and large 
size (3| in. x 2i in.). These remarkable statements of Mr. 
Gould have all been verified by the behaviour of some of these 
birds kept in confinement at the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s 
Park, where this strange method of incubation has been 
observed in every particular. 
That rant, avis, now so no longer, the Black Swan, was 
conspicuous in the West Australian court, it having been 
adopted as the emblem of that colony. It is characteristic of 
Australia, that it should have produced a bird which was once 
regarded as the symbol of impossibility, and put in the same 
category with the phoenix and the mermaid. But the pure 
white of the swan’s down was so proverbial that our ancestors, 
who knew nothing of the extraordinary anomalies of undis- 
covered Australia, might well be excused from imagining a 
black swan, except as a joke, such as that which was alluded to 
under the terms birds’ mill : or asses’ wool. Shaw first gave 
the Black Swan the name of Anas Plutonia, devoting the new 
wonder to the patronage of the infernal king. But really a 
black swan, except in colour, differs but little from our own 
wild swans, and the form of that characteristic part, the 
trachea, is intermediate between that of our wild Hooper and 
the tame swan. 
The group of six Lyre-birds, in the Queensland court, doubt- 
less attracted attention. They were first discovered in Cap- 
tain Flinders’ expedition in 1798, and since then have been 
bandied about among ornithologists, who were unable to agree 
as to their true position ; they have now, however, finally 
settled into their place among gallinaceous birds. Their 
discoverer gave them a high character as song-birds, which, 
however, they have not succeeded in keeping. There is only 
one species ol these splendid birds, whose superb lyre-shaped 
tails may well have astonished the Irishmen who formed the 
exploring party when they were originally found. Mr. Bennett 
says that these tail-feathers are sold in pairs in the shops in 
Sydney, though they are now becoming rare, and fetch from 
twenty to thirty shillings a pair. The Lyre-birds inhabit the 
