also of a
very curious way, in which the bird makes its nest. It never uses its
bill, as other birds do, but tears up grass and dirt and sticks with its
foot and flings it backward into a heap, and thus clears the ground, for
some distance round, so thoroughly, that hardly a grass blade or leaf is
left.

[Illustration: A BULLA AMPULLA. (TWO VIEWS)]

Having finished the pile and waited till it has become heated enough
it lays its eggs, not side by side, as in common cases, but places them,
with the large end upwards, from nine to twelve inches apart, perfectly
upright and buried at nearly an arm's length. The eggs are covered up,
as they are laid, and left until the heat hatches them. Sometimes a
bushel of them are found in one heap, and are very fine eating. When
this Turkey is disturbed, it runs swiftly through the under-brush, or
springs upon the low branch of some tree, and leaps from limb to limb
till it reaches the top.

Another bird, called the Mound Making Megapode, from its big feet, is
somewhat like the Brush Turkey, laying many eggs; it digs holes five or
six feet deep and deposits the eggs at the bottom. The natives gets
these eggs by scratching up the earth with their fingers--a very hard
task, since the holes seldom run straight. Some of these mounds are
enormously large, one of them being found to measure fifteen feet in
height and sixty feet round the bottom. These birds live in the close
thickets on the sea-shore and are never found far inland.

[Illustration: MOUND MAKING MEGAPODE.]

Besides these birds Mr. Brown presented Charley with a glass case
containing a number of different kinds of Humming Birds stuffed so as to
look alive and some of them perched on artificial trees, and others
attached to concealed wires, so as to appear as if they were flying.
(_See frontispiece._) This case of Humming Birds was the chief ornament
of the Museum; greatly was Charley's delight at being its possessor.

Mr. Wilson, the great ornithologist, says, "I have seen the humming
bird, for half an hour at a time, darting at those little groups of
insects that dance in the air, on a fine summer evening, retiring to an
adjoining twig to rest, and renewing the attack with a dexterity that
set all other fly-catchers at defiance." Their feet are small and
slender, but having long claws, and, in consequence they seldom alight
upon the ground, but perch easily on branches, from which also they
generally suspend themselves