80 



Ile des Kangourous et que les naturalistes du 

 dbut du dix-neuvime sicle rapportaient encore 

 l'Emeu au genre Casoar. 



Examinons maintenant l'hypothse de Mathews; 

 voici textuellement son argumentation : 



On the left of the piclure (la planche WXVI 

 c du Voyage de dcouvertes aux Terres australes) is 

 u fgured a white-breasted Emu, and on the right 

 are two figures of a black-breasled bird, one 

 large, the other small. It would appear that 

 Prou considered thse were ail of the same 

 species, for, in bis account of the Cassowaries 

 of King Island, he refers lo this plate, as though 

 t lie birds from lving Island were identical with 

 those from Kangaroo Island. \Ye know* from 

 rcent research, that they were not, D. parvulus 

 (synonyme de D. peroni) from kangaroo Island 

 being distinct from D. minor from king Island. 



Nothing has been said of the 



white-breasted Emu fgured by Lesueur in 

 Pron's Voyage, and it would seem that the 

 d French naturalisas did not distinguish between 

 11 the white-breasted and blaok-breasted birds, but 

 even considered them to be identical with the 

 Common Emu of the Australien Continent 

 (D. uovae-hollandiae) . nyone examining the 

 u figures in plate XXXVI of Pron's work can see 

 that the Emu depicted on the left of this plate 

 d can hardly be the same as the black-breasted 

 bird fgured on the right. 



