DROM.EUS. 



.399 



time had died in the Society's Gardens — ■ "Peter J. J. de Freniery, in a concise Academical 

 Thesis upon the Osteology of the Emu, published in 1^19, lirst pointed out in this struthious 

 bird the existence of an anterior aperture in the trachea." 



It is found in suitable situations o\er the <,'reater portion of the Australian continent. In 

 Eastern and South-eastern .Vustralia it is seldom now met with in the usual haunts, although 

 in Governor Phillip's time the first specimens sent to England were obtained between Sydney 

 Cove and Botany Bay. From where the type was obtained settlement has gradually driven them 

 inland, and it is a rarity for one to be recorded on the coastal side of the Dividing Range. Its 

 numbers are fast decreasing in the more settled parts of New South Wales, owing to the manner 

 in which it is either hunted with horses and dogs, shot down, or its eggs destroyed. On a station 

 in the Riverina District, New South Wales, daring the lambing season of 1S81, no less than 

 fifteen hundred eggs were destroyed and paid for, and on another station in the Cobar District, 



more than that number were broken during 18S7. No less than ten thousand Emus were 

 destroyed in the Wilcannia District during the first nine months of 18SS.I There is no question 

 about it consuming a great quantity of grass, breaking wire fences, disturbing sheep, especially 

 ewes when breeding. As late as April, igii, a Sydney daily paper records:—! "A message 

 from Charleville, Queensland, states that the stations report a pest of Emus, which got amongst 

 breeding ewes, separating the lambs from their mothers. The stations are paying a bonus of gd. 

 per beak to shooters." In Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales it is also an 

 important factor in the distribution of that bane of land-owners, the prickly pear, it being more 

 pronounced under thickly foliaged trees where these birds talce up their quarters for the night. 

 Who in Australia, whether adult or child, has not at one time or another seen an Emu, 

 either in semi-domestication, or in a wild state. Frequently it forms an ornament to the grass- 



* Proc. Zoo). Soc, 1867, pp. 405-15. t Sydiu'ii Morning Herald, 15th October, 18SS. 



i Daily Tdegraph, 3rd April, 191 1. 



