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REPORT ON ZOOLOGY, MDCCCXLII : 
generally of a conical form ; one of them was sixty feet in circumference 
at the base, and fifteen high : the eggs lay deep in these heaps, slightly 
covered with sand, which, by the heat of the sun, acquires a considerable 
warmth. How these heaps have been erected, and how the young come 
out of them when they have newly chipped the shell, has not yet been 
observed by Europeans; and only some unsatisfactory accounts have 
been received from the natives. 
Megapodius, Tallegalla, and Leipoa, form a very remarkable family, 
from the peculiar manner in which they hatch their eggs. They extend 
from the Philippines over the islands of the Indian Archipelago, as far 
as New Holland. 
Hartlaub holds it as certain, that the genus Alechthelia, Less., is only 
the young of Megapodius. (Rev. Zool. p. 204.) 
CrypturidtE. — Lesson has given a new species from Cen- 
tral America, in the Rev. Zool. p. 210, Tinamus (Nothura) 
cinnamomea. 
CURSORES. 
Mayer, in his Neuen Untersuch. aus dem Gebiete der Anat. 
und Physiol, p. 30, has discussed a peculiar formation of the 
sexual opening in the female Emu of New Holland. 
The common opening of the rectum, sexual parts, and urinary organs, 
has the form of a cup, or crown of a flower, of considerable size. There 
are twenty-eight folds, or rays, which run from the middle opening of 
the common fundament, like radii towards the periphery, and form on it 
s6 many sacs, or cells, in which a white fatty substance is secreted. The 
intention of this organ is not known : there is nothing like it in the other 
running birds. It is remarkable, as the author observes, that even in a 
bird of New Holland, there is a purse shaped organ in the sexual region, 
as an expression, so to speak, of the endemic genius of the structure, 
which, in the same country, prevails in the Mammalia. 
A plate is given in the Transactions of the Zoological Society, of a 
fossil thigh-bone, found in New Zealand, which Owen recognised as that 
of a bird allied to the Ostrich. 
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