Brantori Garde Sectory 18

I say _almost_ universal, because even among birds there are a few kinds which have not to this day progressed beyond the alligator level. Australia is the happy hunting-ground of the zooelogist in search of antiquated forms, elsewhere extinct, and several Australian birds, such as the brush-turkeys, still treat their eggs essentially on the alligator method. The cock birds heap up huge mounds of earth and decaying vegetable matter, as much as would represent several cartloads of mould; and in this natural hot-bed the hens lay their eggs, burying each separately with a good stock of leaves around it. The heat of the sun and the fermenting mould hatch them out between them; to expedite the process, the birds uncover the eggs during the warmer part of the day, expose them to the sun, and bury them again in the hot-beds towards evening. Several intermediate steps may also be found between this early stage of communal nesting by proxy and the true hatching instinct; a good one is supplied by the ostrich, which partially buries its eggs in hot sand, but sits on them at intervals, both father and mother birds taking shares by turn in the duties of incubation.

Nearly three hundred species of _Coleoptera_, or beetles, occupy similar positions. Almost any rotten log or stump when broken open discloses a half dozen or more "horn" or "bess beetles," _Passalus cornutus_ L., great, shining, clumsy, black fellows with a curved horn on the head. They are often utilized as horses by country children, the horn furnishing an inviting projection to which may be fastened, by a thread or cord, chips and pieces of bark to be dragged about by the strong and never lagging beast of burden. When tired of "playing horse" they can make of the insect an instrument of music; for, when held by the body, it emits a creaking, hissing noise, produced by rubbing the abdomen up and down against the inside of the hard, horny wing covers. This beetle passes its entire life in cavities in the rotten wood on which it feeds, and when it wishes a larger or more commodious home it has only to eat the more.

• Naprikan Sitemap
• Region 5 Sitemap
• Scalawag Sitemap
• Scoriandrus Sitemap
• Space Infinites Sitemap
• Travidian Sitemap
• Trumantia Sitemap

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