Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/859

Rh M E G M E G 827 dite, Core, Athena Polias, and Hera Teleia. Among the numerous statues which stood in the open air the finest was that of Apollo Epicurius, 12 feet high, brought from the beautiful temple of Bass;e, which was built by Ictinus, and is still in great part standing. On the south side of the river were the theatre, the largest in Greece, the Thersilion or hall for the assembly of the Arcadian diet, a house built for Alexander the Great, with a statue of Zeus Ammon, the stadium, temples to the Muses, Apollo, and Hermes, to Aphrodite, to Ares, to Dionysus, to Hercules and Hermes, to Artemis Agrotera, to Asclepius and Hygiea, to the son of Asclepius, and to Apollo. Of all these buildings, with the exception of the theatre, hardly a trace remains above ground. The ruins of Megalopolis are near Sinanou. The foundations of Megalopolis were hardly laid when Agesilaus undertook an expedition in the hope of breaking up the union of which it was the visible sign and capital. He accomplished nothing, and had hardly reached home- when the Thebans and their allies under Epaminondas and Pelopidas entered the Pelopon nesus and marched through Laconia almost unopposed. After the departure of Epaminondas, Lycomedes of Mantinea succeeded in drawing the Arcadian federation away from its alliance with Thebes, in consequence of which it had to make common cause with Athens An attempt on the part of the federation to use the treasures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia led to internal dissensions, so that in the battle of Mantinea (362) one half of the Arcadians fought on the side of the Spartans, the other on that of the Thebans. After this battle many of the inhabitants of Megalopolis sought to return to their former homes, and it was only by the assistance of three thousand Thebans under Pammenes that the authorities were able to prevent them from doing so. In the year 352, when Thebes had her hanJs full with the so-called Sacred Var, the Spartans made an attempt to reduce Megalopolis ; but the Thebans promptly sent assistance, and the city was rescued. Not sure of this assistance, the Megalopolitans had appealed to Athens, an appeal which gave occasion to Demosthenes s oration riepl MfyaoTrotrtav. The Spartans were now obliged to conclude peace with Megalopolis and acknowledge her autonomy. Nevertheless their feeling of hostility did not cease, and Megalopolis consequently entered into friendly relations with Philip of Macedon. Twenty years later, when the Spartans and their allies rebelled against the power of Macedon, Megalopolis remained firm in its allegiance, and was subjected to a siege of considerable duration. After the death of Alexander, Megalopolis was governed by native tyrants. In the war between Cassander and Polysperchon it took part with the former, and was, in consequence, besieged by the latter. On this Occasion it was able to send into the field an army of fifteen thousand. In 234 B.C. Lydiades, the last tyrant of Megalopolis, voluntarily resigned his power, and the city joined the Achrean league, In consequence of this it was once more exposed to the bittei hatred of Sparta. In 222 Cleomenes took and plundered it, and killed or dispersed its inhabitants, but in the year following it was restored and its inhabitants reinstated by Philopcemen, a native of the city- At this time the circuit of its walls always too great, seems to have been contracted. At all events it never again attained political importance, and gradually sank into insignificance. The only great men whom it produced were Philoposmen and Polybius the his torian. Lycortas, the father of the latter, may be accounted a third In the time of Pausanias the city was mostly in ruins. MEGALOSAURUS. See REPTILES. MEGAPODE, the name given generally to a email but remarkable Family of birds, highly characteristic of some parts of the Australian Region, to which it is almost peculiar. The Megapodiidx v/ith the Cracidx form that division of the Order Gallinse named by Professor Huxley Peristeropodes (Proc. Zuol. Society, 18G8, p. 296), and morphologically seem to be the lowest of the Order, with which apparent fact may perhaps be correlated their singular habit of leaving their eggs to be hatched without incuba tion, burying them in the ground (as many Reptiles do) or heaping over them a mound of earth, leaves, and rotten wood. Thia habit attracted attention more than three hundred years ago, 1 but the accounts given of it by various 1 Antonio Pigafetta, one of the survivors of Magellan s glorious but disastrous voyage, records in his journal, under date of April 1521, among the peculiarities of the Philippine Islands, then first discovered by Europeans, the existence of a bird there, about the size of a Fowl, travellers were generally discredited by naturalists, 2 and as examples of the birds, probably from their unattractive plumage, appear not to have been brought to Europe, no one of them was seen by any ornithologist or scientifically described until near the end of the first quarter of the present century. The first member of the Family to receive authoritative recognition was one of the largest, inhabiting the continent of Australia, where it is known as the Brush-Turkey, and was originally described by Latham in 1821 under the name of the New-Holland Vulture, a misleading designation which he subsequently tried to correct on perceiving its Galline character. It is the Talegallus lathami of modern ornithologists, and is negrly the size of a hen Turkey. Six smaller species of the same genus have since been described, all from New Guinea or the neighbouring islands, but two of them, T. pyrrhopygius and T. bruyni, have been separated to form a group JEpypodius. The Australian bird is of a sooty- brown colour, relieved beneath by the lighter edging of some of the feathers, but the head and neck are nearly bare, beset with fine bristles, the skin being of a deep pinkish-red, passing above the breast info a large wattle of bright yellow. The tail is commonly carried xipright and partly folded, something like that of a domestic Fowl. The next form of which we may speak is another inhabitant of Australia, commonly known in England as the Mallee-bird, but to the colonists as the &quot; Native Pheasant&quot; the Lipoa ocellata, described by Gould in the zoological Proceedings for 1840 (p. 12G), which has much shorter tarsi and toes, the head entirely clothed, and the tail expanded. Its plumage presents a pleasing combina tion of greys and browns of various tints, interspersed with black, white, and buff, the wing-coverts and feathers which laid its eggs, as big as a Duck s, in the sand, and left them to be hatched by the heat of the sun (Premier Voyage autour dn Monde, ed. Amoretti, Paris, A.R. ix. p. 88). More than a hundred years later the Jesuit Nieremberg, in his Historia Naturae, published at Antwerp in 1635, described (p. 207) a bird called &quot; Daie, and Ly the natives named &quot;Tapun,&quot; not larger than a Dove, which, with its tail (!) and feet, excavated a nest in sandy places and laid therein eggs bigger than those of a Goose. The publication at Rome in 1651 of Hernandez s Hist. Avium Novas Ilispanife shews that his papers must have been accessible to Nieremberg, who took from them the passage just mentioned, but, as not unusual with him, misprinted the names which stand in Hernandez s work (p. 56, cap. 220) &quot; Daic&quot; and &quot;Tapum&quot; respectively, and omitted his predecessor s important addition &quot;Viuit iu Philippicis. &quot; Not long after, the Dominican Navarrete, a missionary to China, made a considerable stay in tho Philippines, and returning to Europe in 1673 wrote an account of the Chinese empire, of which Churchill (Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. i.) gave an English translation in 1704. It is therein stated (p. 45) that in many of the islands of the Malay Archipelago &quot;there is a very singular bird call d Tabon,&quot; and that &quot; What I and many more admire is, that it being no bigger in Body than an ordinary Chicken, tho long legg d, yet it lays an Egg larger than a Gooses, so that the Egg is bigger than the bird itself. ... In order to lay its Eggs, it digs ill the Sand above a yard in depth; after laying, it fills up the hole and makes it even with the rest ; then; the Eggs hatch with the heat of the Sun and Sand.&quot; He adds further information which need not be quoted here. Gemelli Careri, who travelled from 1663 to 1699, and in the latter year published an account of his voy al du t&amp;gt; oyage round the world, gives similar evidence respecting this remark- blebird, which he calls &quot; Tavon,&quot; in the Philippine Islands (Voy. . .u tour du Monde, ed. Paris, 1727, v. pp. 157, 158). The Megapode of Luzon is fairly described by Camel or Camelli in his observations on the Birds of the Philippines communicated by Petiver to the Royal Society in 1703 (Phil. Iran*., xxiii. p. 139S). In 1726 Valentyn published his elaborate work on the East Indies, wherein (deel iii. bk. v. p. 320) he very correctly describes the Megapode of Amboina under the name of Malleloe,&quot; and also a larger kind found in Celebes, so as to shew he had in the course of his long residence in the Dutch settlements become personally acquainted with both. 2 Thus Willughby (Ornitholorfia, p. 297), or Ray for him, who had, however, only Niereniberg s evidence to cite, and they can scarcely be blamed for their hesitation, considering the number of other marvels narrated by the same worthy father. Button also (Oiseaux, ix. p. 430) was just as sceptical in regard to the relation of C areri.