“On my arrival at Port Essington my attention was attracted to numerous immense mounds of earth, which were pointed out to me by some of the residents as the tumuli of the aborigines; on the other hand I was assured by the natives that they were formed by the Jungle-fowl for the purpose of incubating its eggs: their statement appeared so extraordinary, and so much at variance with the general habits of birds, that no one in the settlement believed them, or took sufficient interest in the matter to examine the mounds, and thus to verify or refute their accounts; another circumstance which induced a doubt of their veracity, was the great size of the eggs brought in by the natives as those of this bird. Aware that the eggs of _Leipoa_ were hatched in a similar manner, my attention was immediately arrested by these accounts, and I at once determined to ascertain all I possibly could respecting so singular a feature in the bird’s economy; and having procured the assistance of a very intelligent native, who undertook to guide me to the different places resorted to by the bird, I proceeded on the sixteenth of November to Knocker’s Bay, a part of Port Essington Harbour comparatively but little known, and where I had been informed a number of these birds were always to be seen. I landed beside a thicket, and had not proceeded far from the shore ere I 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 _Hibiscus_, was of a conical form, twenty feet in circumference at the base, and about five feet in height. On pointing it out to the native and asking him what it was, he replied, ‘Oooregoorgā Rambal,’ Jungle-fowls’ house or nest. I then scrambled up the sides of it, and to my extreme delight found a young bird in a hole about two feet deep; it was lying on a few dry withered leaves, and appeared to be only a few days old. So far I was satisfied that these mounds had some connexion with the bird’s mode of incubation; but I was still sceptical as to the probability of these young birds ascending from so great a depth as the natives represented, and my suspicions were confirmed by my being unable to induce the native, in this instance, to search for the eggs, his excuse being that ‘he knew it would be of no use, as he saw no traces of the old birds having recently been there.’ I took the utmost care of the young bird, intending to rear it if possible; I therefore obtained a moderately sized box, and placed in it a large portion of sand. As it fed rather freely on bruised Indian corn I was in full hopes of succeeding, but it proved of so wild and intractable a disposition that it would not reconcile itself to such close confinement, and effected its escape on the third day. During the period it remained