THE SAVAGE WORLD 
347 
The Australian Jungle-fowl ( Megapodus ) with its congener, the bush 
turkey , is certainly the most peculiar in its nesting habits of all the birds 
on our globe. If the descriptions given of their manner of building were 
not well authenticated by naturalists who have themselves seen the nests, as 
well as observed the manner of their construction, it would be a great stretch 
of imagination to credit them. • 
In several parts of Australia large mounds were discovered which for a 
long time were thought to be the work of human hands, reared above the 
remains of departed natives before Australia fell under the civilizing influ¬ 
ences of the English. Nor was this belief at once dissipated by the declara- 
NEST OF AUSTRAEIAN JUNGEE-FOWL. 
tions of the natives, who declared the mounds to be artificial ovens, thrown 
up by jungle-fowls , in which their eggs are laid and hatched by the heat of 
the decaying' vegetation which composed them. 
The size of these tumuli is truly marvellous, measuring sometimes sixty 
feet in circumference at the base, and rising to a truncated cone fifteen feet in 
perpendicular height. These mounds are erected by the industrious jungle- 
fowl of earth, leaves and fallen grasses, which it partly conveys and partly 
throws with its feet, which are extremely large, for this purpose. Some 
authorities state that the material is gathered in the grasp of one foot and 
carried by hopping on the other, while Woods maintains that the bird 
gathers up the grasses or leaves with its feet and throws the material back- 
