“The natives frequently find the eggs and nests, but they seldom see the old birds, which are very timid and quick-sighted. They run very fast, like the Emu, roost on trees, and live for a long time without water, but drink when it rains. The natives state that the _Entozoæ_ which I found in the bird mentioned above were unusual, and that it must have been in ill health.
“It is a remarkably stout, compact bird, and appears, when alive, to have as large a body as the female turkey, but it is shorter on the legs.”
To this valuable account I may add the following, furnished by Mr. Gilbert:—
“Wongan Hills, Western Australia, September 28, 1842.
“This morning I had the good fortune to penetrate into the dense thicket I had been so long anxious to visit in search of the Leipoa’s eggs, and had not proceeded far before the native who was with me told me to keep a good look-out, as we were among the _Ngou-oo’s_ hillocks, and in half an hour after we found one, around which the brush was so thick that we were almost running over before seeing it; so anxious was I to see the hidden treasures within that in my haste I threw aside the black fellow and began scraping off the upper part of the mound; this did not at all please him, and he became very indignant, at the same time making me understand, ‘that as I had never seen this nest before I had better trust to him to get out the eggs, or I should, in my haste and impatience, certainly break them.’ I therefore let him have his own way, and he began scraping off the earth very carefully from the centre, throwing it over the side, so that the mound very soon presented the appearance of a huge basin; about two feet in depth of earth was in this way thrown off, when the large ends of two eggs met my anxious gaze; both these eggs were resting on their smaller apex, and the earth around them had to be very carefully removed to avoid breaking the shell, which is extremely fragile when first exposed to the atmosphere; this mound was about three feet in height and seven to nine feet in circumference; the form, as left by the bird, was in outline the segment of a circle. About a hundred yards from this first nest we came upon a second, rather larger, of the same external form and appearance; it contained three eggs. Although we saw seven or eight more mounds, only these two contained eggs; we were too early; a week later and we should doubtless have found many more. To give you an idea of the place this bird chooses for its remarkable mode of rearing its young, I will describe it as nearly as I can:—The Wongan Hills are about thirteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, in a north-north-east direction from Drummond’s house in the Toodyay; their sides are thickly clothed with a dense forest of _Eucalypti_; and at their base is a thicket, extending for several miles, of upright-growing and thick, bushy plants, so high in most parts that we could not see over their tops, and so dense, that if we separated only for a few yards, we were obliged to cooey, to prevent our straying from each other; this thicket is again shadowed by a very curious species of dwarf _Eucalyptus_ bearing yellow blossoms and growing from fifteen to thirty feet in height, known to the natives as the spear-wood, and of which they make their spears, digging sticks, dowaks, &c.; the whole formation is a fine reddish ironstone gravel, and this the Leipoa scratches up from several yards around, and thus forms its mound, to be afterwards converted into a hot-bed for the reproduction of its offspring. The interior of the mounds is composed of the finer particles of the gravel mixed with vegetable matter, the fermentation of which produces a warmth sufficient for the purpose of hatching. Mr. Drummond, who had been for years accustomed to hot-beds in England, gave it as his opinion that the heat around the eggs was about 80°. In both the nests with eggs the White Ant was very numerous, making its little covered galleries of earth around and attached to the shell, thus showing a beautiful provision of Nature in preparing the necessary tender food for the young bird when emerging from the shell; one of the eggs I have preserved shows the White Ant’s tracks most beautifully; the largest mound I saw, and which appeared as if in a state of preparation for eggs, measured forty-five feet in circumference, and if rounded in proportion on the top would have been full five feet in height.