Victorian Fossils, Part XL 23 



Australian Bird Remains. 



Bones of a struthious l)ird> Dro/nornis austraUs, Owen,^ 

 have been recorded from the Pleistocene of Peak Downs and 

 the Paroo River, Queenshmd ;'" Dro/nornis sp. from the Mount 

 Gambier Caves, South Australia, and Phillip Co., New South 

 Wales f and Dromaeus putricins. DeVis, from King's Creek, 

 Darlint; Downs.* Numerous other remains, also from Pleisto- 

 cene deposits, are recoi'ded by the last-named author from the 

 River Condaujine, near Chinchilla, Queensland ; chiefly refer- 

 able to the Anseres and tlie Hallidae. Another extinct bird, 

 Genyornis, allied to the Eums, has been described from the 

 Pleistocene of Lake Callabonna, South Australia, by Messrs. 

 Stirlinfr and Zietz."' And lastly, Prof. Spencer has recently de- 

 scribed an extinct species of Emu {Droniaeus minor), from 

 sub-recent deposits in King Island, Bass Strait.'' Nothing older 

 than the Pleistocene, however, has been hitherto found in Aus- 

 tralian rocks, so that the present occurrence of bird remains 

 has a special interest. 



Description. 



In the specimens now described, the perfect impressions of 

 the two sides of a feather have been preserved in an ironstone 

 deposit of lacustrine origin below the Wannon Falls, at Red- 

 ruth, Western Victoria. The two opposite halves of the iron- 

 stone block containing the impressions, accompanied by an- 

 other, bearing numerous leaf-impressions, were forwarded to 

 the National Museum by the Mines Department in 189.3. 



The feather is moderately long and curved ; having a strong 

 quill or rhachis. The impression shows that this rhachis was 



1 Proe. Zool. Soc. Loud., 1872, p. ^$.-1. Trans. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1873, vol. viii., pt. 4. 

 pp. 381-384, pi. Ixii. ; pi. Ixiii., fi^s. 1, 2. 



2 K. Etheridge, jiir. Rec. Geol. Siirv. N.S. Wales, vol. i., pt. 2, 1889, p. 126. 



?. Owen. Proc. Zool. Soc. Loud., 1877, pt. i., p. 9.5. R. Etheridge, jnr., Cat. Austr. 

 Foss., Cambridge, 1878, p. 179. 



4 De Vis. Proc. Linn Soc. N.S. Wales, vol. iii., pt. 8, 1888, p. 1277. 



h Mem. Roy Soc. S. .4iistralia, vol. i., pt. iii., 1906. 



6 Vict. Naturalist, vol. x\iii., 1906, p. I'lO. Sec also Mem. Nat. Miis. Melbourne, No. 3, 

 1911), 11. '.). 



