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Commodore Directory 09
ETRURIA, which extended along the coast of the Lower Sea from the River Macra on the north to the Tiber on the south. Inland, the Tiber also formed its eastern boundary, dividing it first from Umbria, afterward from the Sabines, and, lastly, from Latium. Its inhabitants were called Etrusci, or Tusci, the latter form being still preserved in the name of _Tuscany_. Besides the Tiber it possesses only one other river of any importance, the Arnus, or Arno, upon which the city of _Florence_ now stands. Of its lakes the most considerable is the Lacus Trasimenus, about thirty-six miles in circumference, celebrated for the great victory which Hannibal there gained over the Romans.
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.
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