MALLEE FOWL. 
laying in that district. These birds laid, as usual, an egg every three or four 
days and continued to lay regularly up to the end of October, after which time 
only one fresh egg was added to the number with an interval of two to four 
weeks between each egg. This irregularity continued to the middle of December. 
The largest clutch obtained from one mound up to the 12th December was eight 
eggs. Then again, over twenty of the owners of the balance of the mounds, 
discovered in September, when the birds had got all the material scraped up 
and had formed their mound in the usual manner ready to receive the eggs, 
did not lay in that month, and had not done so when examined in December. 
On visiting these mounds regularly at intervals of about one week or ten days, 
it was seen that the birds had only just gathered up the dead leaves and other 
debris and had placed the material at the side of the mound, and had done nothing 
further to complete the nest. The general dryness bordering on drought at 
this particular time influenced the birds and so caused this phenomena. It 
is interesting to note that the Leipoa has the power to cease laying. This 
condition is no doubt due to attrition brought about by the scarcity of food as 
well as by the change in the general environment which reacts on the internal 
mechanism of these birds. In the nesting season the bird is never very far from 
the mound in which its eggs are incubating, and if the eggs be taken from it they 
soon repair the damage and place everything in order once again and continue 
laying. At Nhill, in Victoria, a friend of mine opened the top of a mound and 
then retired to his work a little distance away. Returning to the mound some 
time after he found that it had been repaired. He repeatedly uncovered the 
mound several times in one day, and on each ^occasion the mound was 
renovated. This proves that the birds constantly watch the mound, and 
although my friend was unable to see the birds, yet they must have been 
close at hand. Should an egg be placed upside down, that is, on the larger 
end (although there is very little difference in the size of the apices of the egg), 
and left in the mound in this position, the Mallee hen will set it up on its 
proper end again. When laying the egg the bird places it with the smaller end 
downwards, so that the head of the chick, which is formed in the larger end of the 
egg, is uppermost. It is marvellous how the bird does not break her thin- 
shelled egg when adjusting it in its proper position in the mound wiik her 
feet ; and also when opening up the mound each time to lay a further egg 
or when working at the mound during the time when incubation is proceeding. 
That these birds should place their eggs on the smaller and most difficult end on 
which to balance it, shows a wonderful inventiveness and aforethought, since 
it is from the position in which the egg reclines in the egg chamber that the 
young are born in a posture ready to work their way out of the mound, i.e., 
with their feet and head uppermost. The number of eggs that a Mallee fowl 
lays in a season, ranges from one to twenty, varying, as before stated. 
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