26 AUSTRALIAN ZOOLOGY, 
nearly allied genera, forming part of a great family of birds charac- 
terised by their strange mode of dispensing with incubation. 
Habits. —It is extremely shy in disposition, and though often 
heard is seldom seen. It secretes itself among the dense brushes on 
the slightest alarm. When fairly disturbed, however, it flies to an 
adjacent tree, and stretching out its neck, watches and listens 
intently for the intruder, whom it permits to approach no nearer 
than 80 or 100 yards, when it takes wing. The tight is very heavy 
and laborious, but it can run with considerable swiftness, Its note 
is described as something like the cluck of the domestic fowl, with 
a termination similar to the scream of a peacock. Their noisy 
cackling at night disturbs sportsmen camped near one of their 
favourite resorts; and during the day their hoarse note at once 
betrays their presence. The singular habit of mound-building in- 
vests this, and some allied species, with more than ordinary interest. 
The mounds vary very much in size; those recently made are not 
above four or five yards in circumference, and above five feet in 
height, but old ones have been met with many times that size, and 
as high as fifteen feet with good sized trees growing out of them. 
The material used in their formation varies with the locality, sand, 
black soil, shells, &c., with an admixture of vegetable matter, as 
leaves, grass, small sticks. The feet are very powerful, and well 
adapted for accomplishing this purpose. The eggs are deposited at 
a considerable depth in a hole excavated by the old birds, and then 
covered lightly over and left to themselves, the spontaneous heat of 
the decaying vegetable matter sufficing to bring them to maturity, 
When first discovered by the white men it was thought these 
structures were tumuli of the aborigines, but further inquiry showed 
that they were fashioned by a bird. A mound was found by Mr. 
Giibert in company of a native. The latter said it was jungle-fowl’s 
house or nest as other natives had asserted in regard to similar 
piles, but they were not believed. This mound was of sand, shells, 
and a little black soil. It was 20 feet round at the base and five 
feet high. A young bird was found alive in a hole about two feet 
deep, lying on a few dry withered leaves. From another mound, 
which was very large, he obtained two eggs at a depth of six feet 
from the summit, but only two or three from the side, as the whole 
slanted. The natives do not agree as to the mode in which the 
young birds extricate themselves from the mound, Some assert 
that they find their way out unaided; others, that the old birds, 
knowing when the young are ready to emerge, scratch down and 
release them. 
Mound-raising (Dr. Ramsay).—I examined several nests in 
March, and although it was not the regular breeding season, yet 
fresh eggs were obtained, and newly-hatched young were found 
singly here and there throughout the denser parts of the brushes. 
Some of the mounds were very ruthlessly destroyed by the whites, 
and scattered over the ground; this, however, did not cause the 
birds to forsake the place, and out of one large mound, which had 
been very roughly handled, two new ones were formed about ten 
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