peculiar kingfisher, honeysucker, and starling; Ternate has a ground-thrush
(Pitta) and a flycatcher; Banda has a pigeon, a shrike, and a Pitta; Ke has two
flycatchers, a Zosterops, a shrike, a king-crow and a cuckoo; and the remote
Timor-Laut, which should probably come into the Moluccan group, has a
cockatoo and lory as its only known birds, and both are of peculiar species.
The Moluccas are especially rich in the parrot tribe, no less than twenty-two
species, belonging to ten genera, inhabiting them. Among these is the large red-
crested cockatoo, so commonly seen alive in Europe, two handsome red parrots
of the genus Eclectus, and five of the beautiful crimson lories, which are almost
exclusively confined to these islands and the New Guinea group. The pigeons
are hardly less abundant or beautiful, twenty-one species being known, including
twelve of the beautiful green fruit pigeons, the smaller kinds of which are
ornamented with the most brilliant patches of colour on the head and the under-
surface. Next to these come the kingfishers, including sixteen species, almost all
of which are beautiful, end many are among the most brilliantly-coloured birds
that exist.
One of the most curious groups of birds, the Megapodii, or mound-makers, is
very abundant in the Moluccas. They are gallinaceous birds, about the size of a
small fowl, and generally of a dark ashy or sooty colour, and they have
remarkably large and strong feet and long claws. They are allied to the "Maleo"
of Celebes, of which an account has already been given, but they differ in habits,
most of these birds frequenting the scrubby jungles along the sea-shore, where
the soil is sandy, and there is a considerable quantity of debris, consisting of
sticks, shells, seaweed, leaves, &c. Of this rubbish the Megapodius forms
immense mounds, often six or eight feet high and twenty or thirty feet in
diameter, which they are enabled to do with comparative ease, by means of their
large feet, with which they can grasp and throw backwards a quantity of
material. In the centre of this mound, at a depth of two or three feet, the eggs are
deposited, and are hatched by the gentle heat produced by the fermentation of
the vegetable matter of the mound. When I first saw these mounds in the island
of Lombock, I could hardly believe that they were made by such small birds, but
I afterwards met with them frequently, and have once or twice come upon the
birds engaged in making them. They run a few steps backwards, grasping a
quantity of loose material in one foot, and throw it a long way behind them.
When once properly buried the eggs seem to be no more cared for, the young
birds working their way up through the heap of rubbish, and running off at once
into the forest. They come out of the egg covered with thick downy feathers, and
have no tail, although the wings are full developed.