4 Dr. TT. H. Giglioli on a Specimen 



This episode of Bavidin's expedition shows how the exter- 

 mination of D. ater on Kangaroo Island took place. I have 

 been told that in the early days of South Australia a settler 

 squatted on the island and that he deliberately made an 

 end of the Lesser Emeu ; but no date has been given, and we 

 do not even know when the painful fact of the total extinction 

 of this most interesting species was made patent to ornitho- 

 logists ; it was, however, not very long ago ! The worst is 

 that, so far as positive information goes, no specimens 

 except those at Paris have been preserved ; and this is 

 in part a consequence of the general ignorance, until 

 quite recently, of its specific distinction from the Emeu of 

 the Australian main ; even Gould, in his monumental work 

 on 'The Birds of Australia,'' gives D. ater as a synonym 

 of D. nuvce-JwUandi(B. Thus I agree with the last oflScial 

 statement regarding D. ater, that of my friend Salvadori in 

 his masterly work, volume xxvii. of the ' Catalogue of Birds 

 in the British Museum,^ p. 589 : ''Hub. Decres or Kangaroo 

 Island, but now extinct, and only known from a single 

 stuffed specimen and the skeleton in the Paris Museum." 



Many years ago my attention was called to a mounted 

 skeleton of a Ratite in the old didactic collection of our 

 Museum. It was not in first-rate condition, having some 

 portions replaced by imitations in wood of the missing bones, 

 and was remarkable for its small size. It is a three-toed form, 

 certainly not a Rhea, and is labelled "Casoario" ; but the 

 skull is quite smooth above, there being not the slightest trace 

 of the bony support of the horny helmet, and the bill is de- 

 pressed, not compressed as in the Cassowaries. The specimen 

 was kept apart in a store-room and used by students; every 

 time I saw it I felt that it was a problem to be solved, and 

 yet other and incessant occupations kept me from the attempt. 

 And it was only last spring, during a visit of Mr. Walter 

 Rothschild, on his telling me that he was working out the 

 Cassowaries, that I remembered the enigmatical skeleton. 

 A closer inspection showed us that it was without the least 

 doubt a specimen of the extinct Dromaus ater. 



Mr. Rothschild asked me to lend him the specimen, 



