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.
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 when sleeping, with their heads downwards. Their tail is broad. Their nests, about an inch in diameter, and as much in breadth, are very compactly formed, the outer coat of grey lichen, and lined with the fine down plucked from the stalks of the fern and other herbs, and are fixed to the side of a branch or the moss-grown side of a tree so artificially, that they appear, when viewed from below, mere mossy knots, or accidental protuberances. They are bold and pugnacious, two males seldom meeting on the same bush or flower without a battle; and the intrepidity of the female, when defending her young, is not less remarkable. They attack the eyes of the larger birds, when their needle-like bill is truly a formidable weapon; and it is affirmed, that if they perceive a man climbing the tree where their nests are, they fly at his face, and strike him also in the eyes. Most of the species lay only two eggs, and some of them only one. They have been tamed—a female, with her nest and eggs, brought from Jamaica to England, was fed with honey and water on the passage, and the young ones, when hatched, readily took honey from the lips of the lady to whom they were presented, and one, at least, survived two months after their arrival.
HOW CHARLEY ARRANGED HIS MUSEUM.
After uncle Brown had gone home, Charley determined he would begin to be industrious at once. So he went up to his room, and began to arrange his shelves, which his father had put up for the purpose. As he put each one in its place, he examined it very carefully, and tried to recall every thing his uncle had told him about it, so that it might be fixed fast and clear in his memory, for he wished to tell his father and mother and his favorite playmates the wonderful things he had heard. He looked sharp too, to find in them other curious things, which his uncle Brown hadn't mentioned, that he might ask him about them when he came out again, or hunt them up in the books his uncle was to bring him.