122 
ZOOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE. 
bird alone hatches the eggs, and for some time afterwards accompanies the young. 
The cock when on the nest lies very close ; I have myself almost ridden over 
one. It is asserted that at such times they are occasionally fierce, and even 
dangerous, and that they have been known to attack a man on horseback, trying 
to kick and leap on him. My informer pointed out to me an old man, whom he 
had seen much terrified by one chasing him. I observe, in Burchell’s Travels in 
South Africa, that he remarks, “ having killed a male ostrich, and the feathers 
being dirty, it was said by the Hottentots to be a nest bird.” I understand that 
the male emu, in the Zoological Gardens, takes care of the nest : this habit there- 
fore is common to the family.* 
The Gauchos unanimously affirm that several females lay in one nest. I have 
been positively told, that four or five hen birds have been actually watched and 
seen to go, in the middle of the day, one after the other, to the same nest. I may 
add, also, that it is believed in Africa, that two or more females lay in one nest.'j' 
Although this habit at first appears very strange, I think the cause may be 
explained in a simple manner. The number of eggs in the nest varies from 
twenty to forty, and even to fifty ; and according to Azara to seventy or eighty. 
Now although it is most probable, from the number of eggs found in one district 
being so extraordinarily great, in proportion to that of the parent birds, and like- 
wise from the state of the ovarium of the hen, that she may in the course of the 
season lay a large number, yet the time required must be very long. Azara 
states, £ that a female in a state of domestication laid seventeen eggs, each at the 
interval of three days one from another. If the hen were obliged to hatch her 
own eggs, before the last was laid, the first probably would be addled ; but if 
each laid a few eggs at successive periods, in different nests, and several 
hens, as is stated to be the case, combined together, then the eggs in one 
collection would be nearly of the same age. If the number of eggs in one of 
these nests is, as I believe, not greater on an average than the number laid by one 
female in the season, then there must be as many nests as females, and each cock 
bird will have its fair share of the labour of incubation ; and this during a period 
when the females probably could not sit, on account of not having finished 
laying.^ I have before mentioned the great numbers of huachos, or scattered 
* It appears, also, from Mr. Gould’s late most interesting discoveries regarding the habits of the Talegalla 
Lathami , (an Australian bird, one of the Rasores,) that several females lay in one nest, and that the eggs are 
hatched by the heat engendered by a mass of decaying vegetable matter. It appears that the males assist the 
females in scratching together the leaves and earth, of which the great conical mound or nest is composed. 
t Burchell’s Travels, vol. i. p. 280. £ Azara, vol. iv. p. 173. 
§ Lichtenstein, however, (Travels, vol. ii. p. 25.) states, that the hens begin to sit when ten or twelve eggs 
are laid, and that they afterwards continue laying. He affirms that by day the hens take turns in sitting, but 
that the cock sits all night. 
