However, I Soon Made What
Arrangements Were Possible, And Then Set To Work.
The country
around was pretty and novel to me, consisting of abrupt volcanic
hills enclosing flat valleys or open plains.
The hills were
covered with a dense scrubby bush of bamboos and prickly trees
and shrubs, the plains were adorned with hundreds of noble palm-
trees, and in many places 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.
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