difference in the appearance of the sexes, but these were a pair, and it is therefore evident that when the hen is about to deposit the egg, the male assists in excavating the hole in which it is to be buried for incubation. The mound on which they were

busy was between 7 and 8 feet high, and rather more than 100 feet in circumference, and had a large coco palm growing through the centre. It would certainly be the work of a number of birds, and must have taken many years to build."

We got four more megapodes on February 1, one of them containing an unbroken egg of a size remarkable for so small a bird; it measured 3 inches by 2 inches.* The shell is very thick, and when new of a pinkish colour, which changes in the earth to a dirty buff. The temperature of a nest-mound, which we dug into without success in a search for eggs, rapidly increased towards the centre: it was composed of light sandy soil, with apparently no addition of leaves or grass other than that lying about on the earth employed by the birds; the species does not seem purposely to include vegetable matter for causing heat by fermentation.

We failed, whilst here, to obtain a single specimen of a rat; the island is much cut up with holes, high and low, but they are those of crabs, who here also-as on Barren Island and in Kar Nicobar-made off with our baits, leaving behind in some of the traps a quarry we did not at all desire. The only mammal obtained was a large fruit - bat (Pteropus nicobaricus), of which Abbott found a camp up the stream and shot several for specimens. Tracks of pig were seen.

The island is uninhabited, and seems to have been in the same state for some time. In Hamilton's Voyages some account is given of the adventures of a shipwrecked crew, whose vessel, commanded by a Captain Owen, was lost there in 1708. They found the place unpeopled, and, making fires in the night, were

* "I once weighed one of these birds and found it to be only six times greater than its own egg; whereas I found that a domestic hen weighs twentytwo times as much as its own egg.”—E. H. Man.

WRECK AND DEATH OF CAPTAIN OWEN 71

taken off by several canoes that came across from the Nankauri group.

Their further adventures, although more properly appertaining to the history of the central islands of the Nicobars, may as well, for the sake of continuity, be given here.

"The natives," writes Hamilton, very courteously carried the shipwrecked men to their islands of Ning and Goury, with what little things they had saved of their apparel and other necessaries.

"The captain had saved a broken knife about four inches long in the blade, and he having laid it carelessly by, one of the natives made bold to take it, but did not offer to hide it. The captain, finding his knife in the poor native's hand, took it from him and bestowed some kicks and blows on him for his ill manners, which were taken very ill, for all in general showed they were dissatisfied with the action; and the shipwrecked men could observe contention arising among those who were their benefactors in bringing them to the island, and others who were not concerned in it: however, next day, as the captain was sitting under a tree at dinner, there came about a dozen of the natives towards him and saluted him with a shower of darts made of heavy wood, with their points hardened in the fire, and so he expired in a moment.

"How far they had a mind to pursue their resentment I know not, but the benefactors of the shipwrecked men kept guard about their house till next day, and then presented them with two canoes, and fitted them with outleagers to keep them from overturning, and put some water in pots, some coconuts and dry fish, and pointed to them to be immediately gone, which they did.

"Being six in company, they divided equally, and steered their course for Junkceylon, but in the way one of the boats lost her outleager and drowned all her crew. The rest arrived safely, and I carried them afterwards to Masulipatam."

People from Kamorta, from which it can be seen, and who own the plantations on it, come to the island from time to time for the sake of the coconuts, of which there are a fair quantity, and

we found traces of visitors in the remains of two tumble-down huts and a liberal scattering of pigs' skulls.

We weighed anchor at IO A.M., but it was an hour and a half later before we passed the two off-lying islets, for, every few seconds, flaws of wind, coming over the high land, so changed in force and direction that we could get no steerage way, but helplessly boxed the compass all over the bay before we caught a steady breeze. We found deep water between the islets close to the southernmost; everywhere else the ground seemed foul. With a 3-knot breeze we sailed along the western shore, which at this end is much lower than the north, and densely wooded, presenting to view several white beaches and groves of coco palms, while not far from shore are numerous off-lying rocks that continue in a south-easterly direction for about 3 miles from the end of Tilanchong and terminate in a fair-sized islet, named Isle of Man.*

The island of Kamorta lies some 12 miles to the south, the adjacent part rising in low grass-covered hills, with occasional trees dotted about: along the coast runs a fringe of vegetation and coconut trees, while in the centre, where the island is about 450 feet high, it is more thickly covered with forest. Trinkat, closely adjoining it on the east, is very low, and from the sea, seems overgrown with jungle. Darkness had fallen before we reached the southern entrance of Beresford Channel, that runs between it and Kamorta, and proceeding inwards for a short distance, we anchored at 9.45 P.M.

* After Mr E. H. Man, by Col. Strahan, R.E., when surveying the Nicobars in 1886-7.