WARD’S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN. 
but seeks its food along the ground or by climb- 
ing arduously in trees. For a nest it has a bur- 
row in the ground, where it spends the day, 
coming out only at uight to seek its food. This 
bird is fast becoming extinct, owing to the in- 
crease in the island of cats, which, escaped from 
settlers, run wild in the bush. 
Strangest and most remarkable of all the birds 
of New Zealand, perhaps of the world, are the 
Kiwis, of which Prof. Ward has sent us three 
species (Apteryx Otceni, A. Mantelli and A. aus- 
tralis). These birds are tailless, to all appearance 
wingless, and covered with hair-like feathers, 
altogether unlike our usual idea of a bird. In its 
skeleton with keelless sternum, it is a miniature 
ostrich, with the beak of a snipe. We will say 
more of the Apteryx elsewhere. In his Geo- 
graphical Distribution of Animals Wallace fig- 
ures — as characteristic of the New Zealand Sub- 
Region — the genera which we have hastily enu- 
merated, and says of them, “ No country on the 
globe can offer such an extraordinary set of birds 
as are here depicted.” 
In addition to all these modern forms, Prof. 
Ward has been fortunate in securing a fine series 
of the fossil Moas , including several genera, and 
among them a suit which received the highest 
award at the late Industrial Exposition at Mel- 
bourne. These, on account of their perfection and 
size, are unquestionably superior to any specimen 
outside of New Zealand. A more extended no- 
tice will be given in the next Bulletin. 
— 
Intelligence of Fishes. 
During the latter part of 1869 it was my for- 
tune to spend several months at the Chincha 
Islands, off the west coast of Peru. In Decem- 
ber a species of small fish, much resembling the 
white perch, came in for the purpose of spawn- 
ing. They made their appearance in schools' 
varying in number from a hundred to as many as 
a thousand, or even more, swimming in compact 
bodies so close to the surface that the back fin 
and part of the tail was exposed. Here was a 
rare opportunity to spear fish, and one which I, 
as well as others, employed to the best advantage. 
Now, at first, it was a comparatively easy matter 
to row within spearing distance of a school and 
make a successful throw, but after a short time it 
was more difficult, and in the end the fish became 
so watchful that after the spear was thrown, and 
while it was still in the air, the fish would dive 
and escape. Here, it seems to me, is a clear case 
of reasoning. The fish discovered, by bitter ex- 
perience, that a projectile meant disturbance and 
danger, and consequently dove whenever they 
saw one coming. F. A. L. 
Transportation of Insects. 
The following note shows how comparatively 
feeble animals may be transported considerable 
distance across the water: Several years ago it 
was my fortune to be on a sailing vessel bound 
from Peru to London. One evening in the South 
Atlantic we had several severe squalls of wind 
and rain coming from the direction of land, dur- 
ing which many Lepidoptera flew on board. The 
next morning I gathered about fifteen species, 
mostly small moths, although there was one large 
sphinx among them, and one or two delicate but- 
terflies. The nearest land was the coast of Bra- 
zil, distant nearly 300 miles, and judging by the 
number of insects that reached us many must 
have gone much farther. F. A. L. 
Why is a Zulu belle like a prophet ? Because 
she has little on’er in her own country. 
Nest of a Megapod. 
Letter from Prof. Ward, from Port Darwin, near 
the Western shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in 
Northern Australia. 
* * # “ You will observe among my birds 
from New Britain and New Guinea several skins 
of the Megapod. It is in appearance a gallina- 
ceous bird the size of our barnyard fowl, but of 
more sober color, being a dark brown and olive 
tint. It has, also, longer and more slender legs, 
with great feet and lengthened claws unusually 
curved. I saw the same species — Megapodius 
tumulus — on several occasions in Queensland, in 
its short, heavy flight across wooded gullies, with 
its legs hanging straight down, as if broken by a 
shot, after the manner of a porphyrio or water- 
hen. It was a great regret to me that, owing to 
the density of the scrub and the doubtful char- 
acter of the natives in that neighborhood, I 
was unable to search for any distance for their 
strange nests, of which you will remember to 
have read in Wallace’s ‘Malay Archipelago.’ 
Here at Port Darwin I have been more fortunate. 
Soon after reaching here, while getting from all 
sides information as to the animals of the coun 
try, I was informed of the ‘Jungle Cock,’ which 
I recognized as being the bird in question. My 
informant had only seen the bird itself as it was 
brought in by the natives, but he said that he 
could probably get me a guide to their haunts or 
breeding places. So we went to the edge of the 
settlement where was a camp of the natives, or 
rather a lying down place, for they have no huts 
or covering structure of any kind. Here we 
found some forty or fifty of the ‘ black fellows,’ 
as they are called in Australia, who clustered 
around us and made signs for tobacco aud some- 
thing to eat. Some of them could speak a few 
words of English, and to one of them, a sort of 
leader, named ‘Billy Muck,’ we addressed our- 
selves. ‘ Oh, yes,’ said Billy, ‘me know where 
plenty Gungle Cock fellow sit down; me take 
Inglees fellow (that meant me), suppose he give 
us plenty bixit (biscuit) fellow.’ I assured him 
that I would gtive him and all the party plenty of 
‘ bixit fellow,’ but that first they must show me 
the nests. So we started that same afternoon, I 
with nothing but a cutlass to clear my way 
through the thickest bushes, and Billy and his 
four companions with one or two spears each. 
They were all clothed (save a scant breech-cloth) 
in natural attire— the brown-black skin in which 
they were born — with the addition of a profuse 
painting of their faces and chests with white clay 
and red and yellow ochres. They were low in 
stature, and well formed, but their features were 
hideously ugly, and their tangled hair hung over 
their foreheads and into their eyes. There is 
nothing more to admire in an Australian ‘Abo- 
rigine’ than there is in one of our Piute or 
Digger Indians, except that they stand and walk 
beautifully erect-, and when they poise their spears 
their attitude would delight a sculptor. First we 
followed the shore for two miles to a point adja- 
cent to a coral reef, where the day before I 
had fished up a lot of coral and left it on the 
beach to dry. Leaving there we crossed a table- 
topped promontory, where a pretty den^e growth 
of palms and other trees grew out of almost bare 
rock. My Blacks were very hungry, and made 
several casts of their spears at some great black 
cockatoos which flew 7 screaming around the tops 
of the trees above our heads. Failing in this — 
for the height was too great — one of them 
nimbly climbed a tree and tore off some onion- 
like epiphytes which grew on its upper branches, 
and threw them dow T n to his companions who, 
much to his disgust, ate them all before he got 
down to claim a share. Then we struck a sandy 
beach with an inner lagoon of brackish water, 
on the border of which were the tracks of an 
osphranter or great antelopine kangaroo. Its 
foot prints were sixteen inches long and some of 
its leaps were fully fifteen feet. The sandy reach 
was succeeded by a rocky shore, where were 
many curious crabs, one kind of which my 
hungry Blacks pursued eagerly, and ate them raw 
and alive. Here, too, I found, washed up by 
the waves, a curious sponge, of, I think, a genus 
as well as species new to science. Its body part 
was like a large, round turnip, with a crater- 
like hollow in the top through which opened the 
oscuhc. From the bottom, slightly spreading as 
they leave the sphere, are eight hollow roots, 
hanging stiffly down like sticks of maccaroni. 
Further on we came to a mangrove swamp, 
stretching quite out into the sea. The tide was 
low, and the hot, seething mud was vocal with 
the grating noises and pop-gun explosions of 
the crabs and shells which had their burrow's in 
it. The soft surface, too, was furrowed in all 
directions by trailing cerithia — you know 7 the 
shell — the largest two species of which were 
three or four inches, long, and large in propor- 
tion. One of these w T as the rather rare Cerithium 
telescopium, prized by conchologists. It is a cone 
with a flat base nearly two inches across, and 
tapering in beautifully straight lines to a fine, 
sharp point. By careful search I obtained some 
twenty of these, and still more of another species 
in which the mouth of the shell is developed 
with a wide, volute swell, as in the (7. gigan- 
teum , which I used to collect fossil in the Paris 
basin. My Blacks sought these shells as eagerly 
as I, but not for me. No; they would no more 
relinquish them, except as I forced them out of 
their hands, than a dog will give up a bone. As 
fast as they got them they broke a hole through 
the mouth part of the shell and strung them 
bead-wise on a bit of reed. Their intent is to 
hang them in the sun until the animal dies and 
begins to putrify, when it releases its adhesion in 
the shell and can be drawn out and eaten. The 
tide here has twenty feet of rise and fall, so that 
we followed inland through the mangrove bushes 
for more than two miles before we got out of the 
mud. Then the land rose a few feel and changed 
to a sandy loam. And here, stretching far along 
on either side w 7 ere great piles of the same shell 
which we had been collecting, but old and wast- 
ing away. Every one had been broken open to 
get at the animal, and many had been roasted 
and burned to help the process. There were 
millions of these shells, which were mostly in 
irregular, lengthened heaps as large and as high 
as a small dinner table. These represented years 
of feasting of the Aborigines, and I sought 
interestedly among them for other remnants. I 
found no human bones, although these Blacks 
have been great cannibals, and, on occasion, still 
are so. But I found bones of the Dingo or native 
dog; of the opossum, and of the flying fox or 
great bat, which you may see here any night, its 
wings spreading something over three feet. Also 
fragments of the great Fusus (F. proboscidialis) 
and the great clam ( Tridacna gigas ). — Strange 
that these, the two largest shells of the world, 
one univalve and the other bivalve, should be 
found together on this shore and in adjoining 
Queensland. Also there were many old fire- 
sticks, and several broken stone spear - heads. 
Thus far it was a ‘ Kitchen-midding,’ the refuse 
of habitual feasting places of pre historic shore- 
tribes, such as I had walked over and sifted for 
reliquia in Denmark along the eattegat, in the 
West Indies, and in Florida. . But here the upper 
layers were interspersed with broken bottles and 
old tin cans, which told how recent they are. 
Travelling further inland the trees grew thicker 
and taller, and the sandy surface was broken by 
an occasional hillock. Stopping atone of these, 
Billy Muck said, ‘ Gungle Cock fellow sit down 
