with a luxuriant shrubby vegetation. Birds were plentiful and very
interesting, and I now saw for the first time many Australian forms that
are quite absent from the islands westward. Small white cockatoos were
abundant, and their loud screams, conspicuous white colour, and pretty
yellow crests, rendered them a very important feature in the landscape.
This is the most westerly point on the globe where any of the family
are to be found. Some small honeysuckers of the genus Ptilotis, and the
strange moundmaker (Megapodius gouldii), are also here first met with
on the traveller's journey eastward. The last mentioned bird requires a
fuller notice.
The Megapodidae are a small family of birds found only in Australia and
the surrounding islands, but extending as far as the Philippines and
Northwest Borneo. They are allied to the gallinaceous birds, but differ
from these and from all others in never sitting upon their eggs, which
they bury in sand, earth, or rubbish, and leave to be hatched by the
heat of the sun or by fermentation. They are all characterised by very
large feet and long curved claws, and most of the species of Megapodius
rake and scratch together all kinds of rubbish, dead leaves, sticks,
stones, earth, rotten wood, etc., until they form a large mound, often
six feet high and twelve feet across, in the middle of which they
bury their eggs. The natives can tell by the condition of these mounds
whether they contain eggs or not; and they rob them whenever they can,
as the brick-red eggs (as large as those of a swan) are considered
a great delicacy. A number of birds are said to join in making these
mounds and lay their eggs together, so that sometimes forty or fifty
may be found. The mounds are to be met with here and there in dense
thickets, and are great puzzles to strangers, who cannot understand
who can possibly have heaped together cartloads of rubbish in such
out-of-the-way places; and when they inquire of the natives they are but
little wiser, for it almost always appears to them the wildest romance
to be told that it is all done by birds. The species found in Lombock
is about the size of a small hen, and entirely of dark olive and
brown tints. It is a miscellaneous feeder, devouring fallen fruits,
earthworms, snails, and centipedes, but the flesh is white and
well-flavoured when properly cooked.
The large green pigeons were still better eating, and were much more
plentiful. These fine birds, exceeding our largest tame pigeons in size,
abounded on the palm-trees, which now bore huge bunches of fruits--mere
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