ling of a hen that lias recently laid an egg, and is anxious to
publish the stupendous fact in nature's pages ; it may be syllabled
in a variety of ways, but several of us agreed that on the
whole kuk-a-kuk-kuk ! most nearly represented their chuckling
cackling call.
The stomachs of all we examined contained tiny land shells
(sometimes with the animals not yet dead), larvae of insects,
dissolved matter, apparently vegetable, and minute fragments and
particles of quartz or other hard rocks.
When by any fortunate chance you can get them up, they arc
very easy to shoot. They arc most abundant where the soil is light
and sandy, and the ground cover at the bases of the magnificent
trees that overshadow one from above, is therefore comparatively
penetrable, and in such localities, witli a few good
dogs, they would afford very pretty shooting.
As game they arc unsurpassed. The flesh, very white, very
sweet and juicy, loaded with fat, is delicious, a sort of juste
milieu between that of a fat Norfolk Turkey and a fat Norfolk
Pheasant.
The eggs, too, are quite equal, if not superior, to those of the
Pea-Fowl, and to my mind higher commendation cannot be given.
BUT IT is in regard to their nidification that these birds
possess the highest interest. Moderate-sized birds as they arc,
they gradually manage to accumulate tumuli, that would not
have done discredit to the final resting-place of some ancient
British hero, and in these they bury their eggs and leave them
to be hatched by the heat evolved, as I believe, by fermentation,
in the interior of these mounds.
These mounds arc never, as our artist has by mistake represented
one, on the bare sca-shorc ; they are always at least just
completely inside the belt of jungle that fringes the high water
mark, and they are never so high in proportion to their breadth
as he has depicted.
Both Davison and myself took great pains to learn all we
could about the nidification of these, in this respect, queer birds,
and I will quote notes of ours that wc recorded at the time.
He says: " I have seen a great many mounds of this bird.
Usually they are placed close to the shore, but on Bompoka and
on Katchall I saw two mounds some distance inland in the
forest. They were composed of dried leaves, sticks, &c, mixed
witli earth, and were very small, compared with others near the
sea-coast, not being above three feet high and about twelve or
fourteen feet in circumference ; those built near the coast are
composed chiefly of sand mixed with rubbish, and vary very
much in size, but average about five feet high and thirty feet in
circumference; but I met with one exceptionally large one on
the Island of Trinkut, which must have been at least eight feet
high and quite sixty feet in circumference. It was apparently
a very old one, for from near its centre grew a tree about six
inches in diameter, whose roots penetrated the mound in all
directions to within a foot of its summit, some of them being
nearly as thick as a man's wrist. I had this mound dug away
almost to the level of the surrounding land, but only got three
eggs from it, one quite fresh, and two in which the chicks were
somewhat developed.
" Off this mound I shot a Megapode, which had evidently
only just laid an egg. I dissected it, and from a careful examination
it would seem that the eggs are laid at long intervals
apart, for the largest egg in the ovary was only about the size
of a large pea, and the next in size about as big as a small pea.
These mounds are also used by reptiles, for out of one I dug,
besides the Megapode's eggs, about a dozen eggs of some large
lizard.
" I made careful enquiries among the natives about these
birds, and from them I learnt that they usually get four or five
eggs from a mound, but sometimes they get as many as ten ;
they all assert that only one pair of birds are concerned in the
making of a mound, and that they only work at night. When
newly made, the mounds (so I was informed) are small, but are
gradually enlarged by the birds. The natives never dig a mound
away, but they probe it with a stick or with the end of their
daos, and when they find a spot where the stick sinks in easily,
they scoop out the sand with their hands, generally, though not
always, filling in the holes again after they have abstracted the
eggs. The Nicobarcse and the Malay and Burmese traders
take numbers of these eggs, which they generally cook by
placing them in hot ashes ; but they also sometimes boil them
quite bard, and they do not seem to be very particular whether
the egg is fresh or contains a chicken in a more or less advanced
stage of development. The Nicobarese, at any rate, appear
to relish a boiled or roasted chicken out of the egg quite as
much as they do a fresh egg.
"The eggs are usually buried from 3 J to 4 feet deep, and how
the young manage to extricate themselves from the superincumbent
mass of soil and rubbish, seems a mystery. I could not obtain
any information from natives on this point, but most probably
they are assisted by their parents, if not entirely freed by them,
for these latter, so the natives affirm, are always to be found in
the vicinity of the mounds where their eggs are deposited.
" The surface soil of the mounds only is dry ; at about a foot
from the surface, the sand feels slightly damp and cold, but as
the depth increases the sand gets damper but at the same time
increases in warmth."
I, myself, saw a considerable number of these mounds, chiefly
at Galatea Bay, and there I examined some of them very
minutely. These were situated just inside the dense jungle
which commences at springtide high-water mark, It appeared