part, the birds adding a fresh supply of materials on each occasion previous to laying.

a considerable heap above them. The eggs are per fectly white, of a long, oval form, three inches and three-quarters long by two inches and a half in diameter."

The same author relates that these birds, while stalking about the wood, frequently utter a loud clucking noise ; and, in various parts of the bush, he observed depressions in the earth, which the natives informed him were made by the birds in dusting themselves. The stomach is stated by Mr. Gould to be extremely muscular; and he found the crop of one which he dissected filled with seeds, berries, and a few insects.

"The mode," says Mr. Gould in continuation, "in which the materials composing these mounds are accumulated is equally singular, the bird never using its bill, but always grasping a quantity in its foot, throwing it backwards to one common centre, and thus clearing the surface of the ground, for a considerable distance, so completely that scarcely a leaf or a blade of grass is left. The heap being accumulated, and time allowed for a sufficient heat to be engendered, the eggs are deposited, not side by side, as is ordinarily the case, but planted at the distance of nine or twelve inches from each other, and buried at nearly an arm's depth, perfectly upright, with the large end upwards; they are covered up as they are ascertained. It is known, he says, to inhabit various laid, and allowed to remain until hatched. I have parts of New South Wales, from Cape Howe on the been credibly informed, both by natives and settlers south to Moreton Bay on the north; but the cedarliving near their haunts, that it is not an unusual cutters and others, who so frequently hunt through event to obtain nearly a bushel of eggs at one time the brushes of Illawarra and Maitland, have nearly from a single heap; and as they are delicious eating, extirpated it from those localities, and it is now most they are eagerly sought after. Some of the natives plentiful in the dense and little-trodden brushes of

state that the females are constantly in the neighborhood of the heap about the time the young are likely to be hatched, and frequently uncover and cover them up again, apparently for the purpose of assisting those that may have appeared; while others have informed me that the eggs are merely deposited,

Mr. Gould states that the extent of the range of this species over Australia is not yet satisfactorily

the Manning and Clarence. Mr. Gould was at first led to believe that the country between the mountain-ranges and the coast constituted its sole habitation; but he was agreeably surprised to find it inhabiting the scrubby gullies and sides of the lower hills that branch off from the great range into the interior.

Namoi.

In the Leipoa the bill is nearly as long as the head, slender, tumescent at the base, the edges undulated and incurved at the base, the nostrils ample,

and the young allowed to force their way unassisted. He procured specimens on the Brezi range to the In all probability, as nature has adopted this mode north of Liverpool Plains, and ascertained that it of reproduction, she has also furnished the tender was abundant in all the hills on either side of the birds with the power of sustaining themselves from the earliest period; and the great size of the egg would equally lead to this conclusion, since in so large a space it is reasonable to suppose that the bird would be much more developed than is usually found in eggs of smaller dimensions. In further confirmation of this point, I may add, that in searching for eggs in one of the mounds, I discovered the remains of a young bird, apparently just excluded from the shell, and which was clothed with feathers, not with down, as is usually the case. It is to be hoped that those who are resident in Australia, in situations favorable for investigating the subject, will direct their attention to the further elucidation of these interesting points. The upright position of the eggs tends to strengthen the opinion that they are never disturbed after being deposited, as it is well known that the eggs of birds which are placed horizontally are frequently turned during incubation. Although, unfortunately, I was almost too late for the breeding-season, I nevertheless saw several of the heaps, both in the interior and at Illawarra: in every instance they were placed in the most retired and

shady glens, and on the slope of a hill, the part oblong, covered with an operculum, and placed in a above the nest being scratched clean, while all below central hollow. Head subcrested. Wings ample,

remained untouched, as if the birds had found it more easy to convey the materials down than to throw them up. In one instance only was I fortunate enough to find a perfect egg, although the shells of many from which the young had been excluded were placed in the manner I have described. At Illawarra they were rather deposited in the light vegetable mould than among the leaves, which formed

rounded, concave; fifth primary quill the longest; the tertiaries nearly as long as the primaries. Tail rounded, tail-feathers fourteen. Tarsi moderate, robust, covered with scuta anteriorly, and posteriorly with scales which are rounded and unequal. Toes rather short; lateral toes nearly equal. (Gould.) Head and crest blackish-brown; neck and shoulders dark ash-gray; the forepart of the neck from the chin to the breast marked by a series of lanceolate informed Mr. Gould that he had never fallen in with feathers, which are black with a white stripe down the nests but in one description of country, viz., the centre; back and wings conspicuously marked where the soil was dry and sandy, and so thickly with three distinct bands of grayish-white, brown, wooded with a species of dwarf Leptospermum, that and black, near the tip of each feather, the marks if the traveller strays from the native paths, it is assuming an ocellated form, particularly on the tips almost impossible for him to force his way through. of the secondaries; primaries brown, their outer In these close scrubby woods, small open glades ocwebs marked with two or three zigzag lines near casionally occur, and there the Ngow-oo constructs their tip; all the under surface light buff, the tips of the flank feathers barred with black; tail blackishbrown, broadly tipped with buff; bill black; feet blackish-brown.

In size, this beautiful bird is inferior to Talegalla Lathami, and it is more slender and more elegantly formed.

its nest-a large heap of sand, dead grass, and boughs, at least nine feet in diameter and three feet in height; Captain Grey had seen them even larger than this. Upon one occasion only he saw eggs in these nests: they were placed some distance from each other, and buried in the earth. Captain Grey states that he is not sure of the number, but the account given by the natives led him to believe that, at times, large numbers were found.

Mr.

This bird is found in Western Australia. Moore saw a great many of them about sixty miles

Mr. Gould, in his "Birds of Australia," gives an account collected by Mr. John Gilbert, from G. Moore, Esq., advocate-general, Mr. Armstrong, the aboriginal interpreter, and some of the more intelligent natives of Western Australia. The Ocellated north of Perth; but its most favorite country appears Leipoa is there described as a ground-bird, never to be the barren sandy plains of the interior, one taking to a tree except when closely hunted: when hundred miles north and east of York. The farthest hard pursued it will frequently run its head into a point north at which Captain Grey saw the breedingbush, and is then easily taken. Food generally con- places was Gantheaume Bay. Captain Grey states sisting of seeds and berries. The note mournful, that the natives of King George's Sound say that the very like that of a pigeon, but with a more inward same or a nearly allied species exists in that neightone. Eggs deposited in a mound of sand, the forma- borhood.

tion of which is the work of both sexes. According to the natives, the birds scratch up the sand for many yards around, forming a mound about three feet in height, the inside of which is constructed of alternate layers of dried leaves, grasses, &c., among which twelve eggs and upwards are deposited, and are covered up by the birds as they are laid; or, as the natives express it, "the countenances of the eggs are never visible." Upon these eggs the bird never sits; but when she has laid out her lay, as the henwives say, the whole are covered up, when the mound of sand resembles an ant's nest. The eggs, which are white, very slightly tinged with red, and about the size of a common fowl's egg, are hatched by the heat of the sun's rays, the vegetable lining retaining sufficient warmth during the night: they are deposited in layers, no two eggs being suffered to lie without a division. The natives, who are very fond of the eggs, rob the hillocks two or three times in a season; and they judge of the number of eggs in a mound by the quantity of feathers lying about. are of a very deep cinnamon-brown; back of the

If the feathers be abundant, the hillock is full; and then they immediately open and take the whole. The bird will then begin to lay again, again to be robbed, and will frequently lay a third time. Upon questioning one of the men attached to Mr. Moore's expedition, he gave to Mr. Gilbert a similar account of its habits and mode of incubating; adding, that in all the mounds they opened they found ants almost as numerous as in an ant-hill; and that, in many instances, that part of the mound surrounding the lower portion of the eggs had become so hard, that they were obliged to chip round them with a chisel to get the eggs out: the insides of the mounds were always hot.

Captain Grey, of the 83d regiment, who had just returned from his expedition to the north-west coast,

Megapodius Tumulus, Mound-raising Megapode, with nest in the distance. (Gould.)

In the Megapodius Tumulata, the head and crest

neck and all the under surface very dark gray; back
and wings cinnamon-brown; upper and under tail-
coverts dark chestnut-brown; tail blackish-brown;
irides generally dark brown, but in some specimens
light reddish-brown; bill reddish-brown, with yellow
edges; tarsi and feet bright orange, the scales on
the front of the tarsi from the fourth downwards, and
the scales of the toes, dark reddish-brown.

Size about that of a common fowl.
This is the Ooregoorga of the aborigines of the
Cobourg Peninsula; the Jungle-fowl of the colonists
of Port Essington.

On Mr. Gilbert's arrival at Port Essington, his attention was attracted to numerous great mounds of earth which were pointed out to him by some of the residents as being the tumuli of the aborigines. The natives, on the other hand, assured him they were formed by the Jungle-fowl for the purpose of hatching its eggs. But this last statement appeared so extraordinary, and so much at variance with the general habits of birds, that no one in the settlement

How the young effect their escape does not appear; some natives told Mr. Gilbert that the nestlings effected their escape unaided; but others said that the old birds at the proper time scratched down and released them. The natives say that only a single

room for Mr. Gilbert's description of the general habits of this interesting species:

believed them, and the great size of the eggs brought pair of birds are ever found at a mound at a time. in by them as the produce of this bird strengthened Our space will not permit a more detailed account the doubt of the veracity of their information. Mr. of these highly curious mounds; we can only spare Gilbert, however, knowing the habits of Leipoa, took with him an intelligent native, and proceeded about the middle of November to Knocker's Bay, a part of Port Essington harbor comparatively but little known, and where he had been informed a number sea-beach: it appears never to go far inland, except

of these birds were to be seen. He landed beside a thicket, and had not advanced far from the shore when he came to a mound of sand and shells, with a slight mixture of black soil, the base resting on a sandy beach, only a few feet above high-water mark: it was enveloped in the large yellow-blossomed Hi

"The Jungle-fowl is almost exclusively confined to the dense thickets immediately adjacent to the

along the banks of creeks. It is always met with in pairs or quite solitary, and feeds on the ground, its food consisting of roots which its powerful claws enable it to scratch up with the utmost facility, and also of seeds, berries, and insects, particularly the larger species of Coleoptera. It is at all times a

biscus, was of a conical form, twenty feet in circum- very difficult bird to procure; for, although the rustference at the base, and about five feet high On ling noise produced by its stiff pinions when flying asking the native what it was, he replied, "Ore- away be frequently heard, the bird itself is seldom goorgā Rambal" (Jungle-fowl's house or nest.) Mr. to be seen. Its flight is heavy and unsustained in Gilbert scrambled up the sides of it, and found a the extreme; when first disturbed, it invariably flies young bird in a hole about two feet deep; the nest- to a tree, and on alighting stretches out its head and

ling, apparently only a few days old, was lying on a few dry withered leaves. The native assured Mr. Gilbert that it would be of no use to look for eggs, as there were no traces of the old birds having lately been there. Mr. Gilbert took the utmost care of the young bird, placed it in a moderate-sized box, into which he introduced a large portion of sand, and fed it on bruised Indian corn, which it took rather freely. Its disposition was wild and intractable, and it effected its escape on the third day. While it remained

neck in a straight line with its body, remaining in this position as stationary and motionless as the branch upon which it is perched: if, however, it becomes fairly alarmed, it takes a horizontal but laborious flight for about a hundred yards, with its legs hanging down as if broken. I did not myself detect any note or cry, but, from the natives' description and imitation of it, it much resembles the clucking of the domestic fowl, ending with a scream like that of the peacock. Iobserved that the birds continued to lay from the

in captivity, it was incessantly employed in scratch- latter part of August to March, when I left that part ing up the sand into heaps, and Mr. Gilbert remarks of the country; and, according to the testimony of that the rapidity with which it threw the sand from the natives, there is only an interval of about four or one end of the box to the other was quite surprising five months, the driest and hottest part of the year, for so young and small a bird, its size not being between their seasons of incubation. The compolarger than that of a small quail. At night it was sition of the mound appears to influence the coloring so restless that Mr. Gilbert was constantly kept of a thin epidermis with which the eggs are covered, awake by the noise it made in endeavoring to escape. and which readily chips off, showing the true In scratching up the sand, the bird only employed shell to be white; those deposited in the black soil one foot, and having grasped a handful as it were, are always of a dark reddish-brown; while those threw the sand behind it with but little apparent from the sandy hillocks near the beach are of a dirty exertion, and without shifting its standing position on yellowish-white: they differ a good deal in size, but the other leg. This habit, Mr. Gilbert observes, in form they all assimilate, both ends being equal; seemed to be the result of an innate restless disposition and a desire to use its powerful feet, and to have but little connexion with its feeding; for, although Indian corn was mixed with the sand, Mr. Gilbert never detected the bird in picking any of it up while thus employed.

they are three inches and five lines long by two inches and three lines broad."

London Mechanics. London employs 15,503 shoemakers, 14,502 tailors, 2391 blacksmiths, 2013 whitesmiths, 5032 house-painters, 1075 fish-dealers, 2662 hatters and hosiers, 19,208 carpenters, 6822 bricklayers, &c., 5416 cabinet-makers, 1005 wheelwrights, 2108 sawyers, 2897 jewellers, 1172 old clothesmen, (chiefly Jews,) 3628 compositors, 700 pressmen, 1392 stationers, 2633 watch and clock makers, 4227 grocers, 1430 milkmen, 5655 bakers, 2091 barbers, 1040 brokers, 4322 butchers, 1568 cheesemongers, 1082 chemists, 5199 clothiers and linen drapers, 2167 coach makers, 1367 coal merchants, 2133 coopers, 1381 dyers, 2319 plumbers, 907 pastry-cooks, 869 saddlers, 1249 tinmen, 803 tobacconists, 1470 turners, 556 undertakers. The above are all adult males.

An Eastern Garden.