In a wild state they are shy, and cannot easily be approached. The flesh of the young birds is accounted very good eating. The female is said to make her nest in the rotten limbs of trees, using nothing more than the accumulation of vegetable mould formed by the decayed parts of the bough. The eggs are white, without spots; there are no more than two young at a time. The natives first find the nest by the pieces of bark and twigs which the old birds strip off the trees adjoining that in which the nest is situated. It is a remarkable fact that the bark is never stripped off the tree which contains the nest. Mr. Bennet, in speaking of the large black Cockatoo of New Holland, says, that if this bird observes on the trunk of a tree indications of a larva being within, it diligently labours to get at it with its powerful beak, and should the object of its pursuit be deep within the wood, as often happens, the trunk becomes so extensively hacked, that a slight gust of wind will lay the tree prostrate. § V.--_Gallinaceous Birds._ [Illustration: THE PEACOCK. (_Pavo cristatus._)] ASTONISHED at the unparalleled beauty of this bird, the ancients could not help indulging their lively and creative fancy, in accounting for the magnificence of his plumage. They made him the favourite of imperial Juno, sister and wife to Jupiter; and not less than the hundred eyes of Argus were pulled out to ornament his tail; indeed, there is scarcely anything in nature that can vie with the transcendent lustre of the Peacock’s feathers. The changing glory of his neck eclipses the deep azure of ultramarine; and at the least evolution, it assumes the green tint of the emerald, and the purple hue of the amethyst. His head, which is small and finely shaped, has several curious stripes of white and black round the eyes, and is surmounted by an elegant plume, or tuft offeathers, each of which is composed of a slender stem and a small tuft at the top. Displayed with conscious pride, and exposed under a variety of angles to the reflections of light, the broad and variegated disks of his train, of which the neck, head, and breast of the bird become the centre, claim our admiration. By an extraordinary mixture of the brightest colours, it displays at once the richness of gold, and the paler tints of silver, fringed with bronze-coloured edges, and surrounding eye-like spots of dark brown and sapphire. The hen does not share in the beauty of the cock, and her feathers are generally of a light brown. She lays only a few eggs at a time, generally at an interval of three or four days; they are white and spotted, like the eggs of the turkey. She sits from twenty-seven to thirty days. The loud screamings of the Peacock are worse than the harsh croakings of the raven, and a sure prognostic of bad weather; and his feet, more clumsy than those of the turkey, make a sad contrast with the elegance of his plumage: