How the female lays eggs as big as those of a goose, and buries them in the sand, where they are hatched by the heat of the sun.

Sometimes she cannot find a sandbank to suit her purpose.

She then raises a circular platform of mud mixed with grass and sticks.

Upon this she deposits a layer of eggs, and covers them over with several inches of mud and grass.

She then lays a fresh tier of eggs, covering these also with mud, and so on until she has laid her whole hatching, which often amounts to nearly two hundred eggs, of a dirty greenish-white colour.
In the end she covers all up with mud, plastering it with her tail until it assumes the appearance of a mud oven or beaver-house.