10 
WARD’S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN. 
here.’ I hgrdly knew what to make of it. Hefe 
was a mound fully twenty-five feet across at 
base, and about five feet high, covered with a 
few bushes and one young tree with trunk over 
six inches in diameter. I shook my head vigor- 
ously with denial. But Billy said yes. ‘ Yas, he 
old fellow nest.’ Then he beckoned me, with 
finger-tips downwards , as do all savages, to come 
further. Roaming at random for five or ten 
minutes more, we came to a place somewhat 
bare of trees, in which, in a space of ten or 
twelve acres, were no less than three of these 
mounds. They were all old ones, much worn 
down by rain and grown over with bushes. But 
they all had a distinctive shape — a truncated 
cone, with a peculiar hollowing out of the ground 
for several yards around the base. I saw clearly 
that they were what I had come out to see, that 
I had not been deceived, and I made the amende 
honorable to Billy by telling him so. He only 
scowled, but said, ‘Suppose me find Gungle 
Cock heself you give Billy plenty bixet fellow? ’ 
I said yes, and thereat he started, still skulking 
through the woods. We went in many direc- 
tions, and for a long time, until I was thoroughly 
tired, yet we saw no Jungle Cock. But we came 
to one fine nest, apparently but lately finished. 
Dropping my cutlass I stopped and stared at 
this in wonder. Can this great mound really be 
the work of a bird? How much it looks like a 
‘Mound Builder’s’ tumulus, which I have for- 
merly dug into in Minnesota and Missouri, and 
bi'ought out a human skull and bones there 
buried. But this present mound is fresh, is more 
abrupt, and it has a curious truncated top. It is, 
in short, a fine, systematic cone of loamy sand 
which has clearly been taken from the hollowed 
area which extends for over four yards all around 
its base, I measured the cone carefully. It was 
almost an exact circle, twenty-two feet across at 
the base and five and a half feet high. There 
has been no rain for several months past, and the 
sides are quite full and entire; not furrowed, as 
were the previously seen nqsts. Its top was 
truncate, with an area of about thirty inches 
across, and this area had in its center a sunken 
part of about the dimensions of a common wash- 
bowl. In this crater and around its edge were 
many fragments of a coarse, reddish egg shell, 
which I recognized as the egg of the Megapod. 
So the nest had at least been used for one pre- 
vious season, although the freshness of the cone 
would show that it had been built up (renewed) 
lately, or since the last rains. This and what I 
heard from others convinces me that the nest is 
used for two or three consecutive seasons, being, 
doubtless, each time repaired a little. I asked 
Billy to dig for eggs; but he replied, saying, ‘No 
egg fellow sit down there; him all go way; ’ and 
then he imitated how the little ones had scram- 
bled out through the dirt — some in the crater 
and some breaking out at the side , and had run 
away into the bushes. He said, ‘Bye bye soon 
come plenty rain; then come Gungle Cock, two, 
three, four,' then plenty eggs fellow.’ Billy went 
on to show me, partly by words and partly by 
pantomine, the eggs (he said there were more 
than twenty of them) were placed in a circle two 
feet in diameter in the crater, and that the first 
laid were clear down toward the bottom of the 
mound, and the last (uppermost) ones were some 
three feet belo-w the bottom of the crater. Then 
he added that ‘Plenty bush fellow (he meant 
leaves and stalks) sit 'down there,’ pointing to 
bottom of the cone. I knew that he was correct, 
for a gentleman in Queensland who had exca- 
vated a Megapod mound told me all about it. 
To this friend and to authors I am then indebted 
for further facts, for I had not half a dozen 
laborers with picks and shovels to open this 
strange nest for me and show me its inner build- 
ing. This great cone-nest is a family affair, in 
the making of which three or four, or sometimes 
as many as six of the Megapod birds, both cocks 
and hens, unite their labors. Choosing a clear 
spot in the dense scrub, they first dig a broad, 
circular basin some eighteen inches deep in its 
center. Then from the vicinity they gather 
quantities of fresh leaves, and stalks, and grass, 
and with it they not only fill this hole, but go on 
and make a pile a foot or two high above the 
ground level. This done, they proceed to cover 
all with the dirt cone. Seizing a claw -full of dirt 
(here come in play their sharp, curved claws) they 
run quickly backward for three or four steps, as if 
to gain momentum, and throw the dirt on to the 
pile. This they keep up from day to day, seek- 
ing their material further and further from the 
base of the cone, which ever grows higher, and 
ever gives the toiling bird greater exertion to 
throw its claw-full to the top. Several weeks 
are spent in the building of the cone, which is 
commenced in the early spring — here August 
and September— and completed before the rains 
come on. The laying time is just before the 
rains. With patient labor the fowl, starting in 
the crater, digs out a hole, reaching down almost 
or quite to the leaves. There it lays its eggs in 
a large ring, placing them, with great care, the 
large end up, and covering them over This 
process takes a full fortnight, for as the egg, three 
and a half inches long by two and a half in 
diameter, is very large for the bird, it follows 
that but one of them can be matured at a time, 
and that at least one day must intervene between 
each laying. As before stated, the nest is a fam- 
ily one, and from two to four birds — probably as 
many as were engaged in its construction— lay 
in it in turn. By the time that all are laid and 
the hole is filled, the fermentation and decom- 
position of the leaves, aided, no doubt, by the 
rain which filters down from the crater, creates 
a heat which is constant and of a degree suitable 
to hatch the eggs. In due time the young emerge 
from the shell, and at once scratch their way up 
and out and run off to the scrub, where they find 
ready at hand their food of seeds, and berries, 
and coleoptera. It seems well established that in 
all this they are unaided by the parent birds, 
who, moreover, are never seen with or near the 
young. A fellow passenger on our steamer tells 
me that in the Marshall Islands, where he has 
resided for some years, the Megapods dig deep 
holes in the sands on the hottest banks, and leave 
the eggs in them, slightly covered, to be hatched 
by the sun’s heat. Also that there the parent 
birds never see their young. How at variance is 
this with the usual habit of birds, where with 
the natural parent the incubating aropvr] is so 
constant and often so violent. Yet the ostrich, 
which lays its eggs in the desert sand, or, nearer 
home, our cow bunting, which lays in other nests 
for other parents to hatch and to rear the young, 
are other notable instances of this altered nature. 
A Bible writer is quite happy in his expression 
about the former bird when he says (Job, xxxix: 
16) ‘ She is hardened against her young ones as 
though they were not hers.’ But how far is he 
from the fact when he adds, ‘ For God hath de- 
prived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted 
to her understanding.’ Nothing in other acts of 
maternal instinct surpasses the prefatory care 
(before laying their eggs) of these non-incubating 
birds. 
“But while I have been looking at the Megapod ! 
nests my Blacks have gotten very hungry, and 
are foraging in every directiod for something to 
eat. They have been clubbing from a tree a sort 
of green almond-looking fruit, and it amuses me 
to see how each one scrambles for all that he can 
get, without any reference to whose club brought 
it down. Another has chased a frilled lizard 
Ghlamydosaurus Kingi) into a hollow limb, and 
when he has arduously pushed the saurian 
through to me, I quietly wrap it in my handker- 
chief and put it in my pocket, while the Black 
stares at me, his looks saying, ‘ Twas not for that 
I took you into the partnership.’ Billy has found 
in a shady place a group of half a dozen low, 
succulent, flower-like stalks vdiich look greatly 
like our ‘Jack-in-the-Pulpit ’ or ‘Indian Turnip ’ 
(Arimma triphyllum). Softly, that others may 
not be attracted, he says to me, ‘ Yam fellow sit 
down there,’ and then he goes on to dig them up 
and tie their potato-like roots in his hair. I am 
much pleased when he tells me about this root. 
‘ Him fellow very bad, burns mouth (this by 
pantomine), first cook plenty fire.’ How exactly 
is this like our American plant. Billy, in digging 
up the roots, has found a grub-like caterpillar 
more than half a foot long. I stop him a bit to 
look at it, and then as I give it back what a tussle 
there is between him and two others, each snatch- 
ing for pieces of the tid-bit. which they eagerly 
swallow. These Blacks care for nothing so much 
as for food. Promise them that and they will 
do anything; give them that and they will go to 
sleep and do nothing. This I have seen abun- 
dantly during the last few months, dowm the 
coast of Queensland and New South Wales. 
Even when my black divers had waited with me 
in a boat for one or two hours, for the tide to be 
at its lowest, so that we might reach something 
on a coral bank, they would, if I had incau- 
tiously given them any food, lie down to sleep at 
the most critical moment, and neither words nor 
blows could start them up. 
“ Leaving our Megapod nest we came out of 
the brush by another way, and struck the 
same sand-reach where we had before seen the 
osphranter tracks. There my Blacks, who had 
now filled their bellies, lay down for a sleep, 
although we were still three miles from the port 
and night coming on. They had all the food 
they required and cared nothing for me, for my 
persuasions, or even for my ‘bixit/’ But Billy — 
I ought not to have said that he was naked, for 
he wore a piece of plaited palm-leaf around one 
arm, through which was thrust a short pipe — 
Billy had another want to be met. So I prom- 
ised him tobacco, and with that magic word I 
drew him away from the rest, and he piloted me 
home. Before I let him go I got from him two 
spears which had long stone heads of a sort of 
crystalline quartzite, the fracture of which is 
much like obsidian, and thus is well suited for 
its purpose. 
“The Overland Telegraph line, 2,000 miles 
long, comes out to the coast here at Port Darwin, 
For soipe time after its completion the Blacks in 
the interior climbed the poles and tore away the 
porcelain insulators to break up and use as 
knives. Now this has ceased, for the telegraph 
company has considerately put broken bottles 
at the foot of the posts for many miles, and the 
Blacks have loyally accepted the exchange. On 
our way back to the settlement Billy caught for 
me a beautiful specimen of the rare, tiny mar- 
supial, the Belideus ariel , much like our flying 
squirrel in its general appearance. It had two 
young, which were grown too large to creep into 
her pouch, yet clung to their mother. Thus im- 
peded they all fell into my hands. This adds a 
much desired species to my already large list of 
Australian Marsupials. And as in this case, so 
in several scores of others, I have with the adult 
the young, the latter often still adhering to the 
mammae within the mother’s pouch. 
Yours, etc., Henry A. Ward. 
[SONG.J 
The Wild Fejees. 
’Tis said the wild Fejees, 
Who live across the briny seas, 
They kill each other just for fun, 
And pick their bones when they are done. 
Chorus— O! ye horrible Fejees, 
Where in the world are your leges ? 
Have you no laws 
To govern your jaws. 
To keep you from feeding on homo? 
Some seek them from pure love, 
To point them to the world above, 
But these they snatch with cruel ire, 
And place them broiling on the fire. 
Chorus — O! ye horrible Fejees, &c. 
The victim, thus prepared, 
Is passed around and duly shared, 
And from the remnants, ’tis their boast, 
They have a dish called Priest on Toast. 
Chorus — O! ye horrible Fejees, &c. 
A New Definition.— “What did you say 
your friend is, Tommy?” “A taxidermist.” 
“What’s that?” “Why, he is a sort of ani- 
mal upholsterer.” 
Fred, is a naturalist, but when a lady visitor 
asked to be shown a “ cro-cod'-i-le ” he had to 
blush and acknowledge he never heard of such 
an animal. 
