76 From Magazines, &'c. \ tst 



July 



but where it came from and whither it went cannot be traced. 

 A live pair of Van Diemen's Cassowary was exhibited in London — 

 perhaps in the old menagerie of Exeter 'Change, the doctor thinks 

 — and was seen by Dr. Latham, who described the species as 

 D. (iter, figuring one in his " General History of Birds " (1822), 

 plate exxxviii. Nothing is known of the fate of these birds 

 either. All ornithologists, particularly Australians, will share 

 in Dr. Renshaw's lament for the disappearance " utterly from 

 the face of the earth " of the little, tractable Black Emu — a 

 specimen of which lived in Paris for 18 years. He says the 

 species should not rank with the " commoner " extinct birds — 

 Great Auk, Labrador Duck, &c. — but should rather be enrolled 

 in the " almost unique " series of exceedingly rare forms. What is 

 to be said of " the squatter " who on leasing Kangaroo Island 

 barbarously exterminated all the Emus (besides kangaroos) 

 thereon ? 



There is just one interesting point in Dr. Renshaw's valuable 

 article which he appears to have missed. Why did Latham call 

 the birds he saw " Van Diemen's Cassowary " ? It is strongly 

 suggestive that this was because they came from Tasmania — Van 

 Diemen's Land in those days. In the absence of testimony 

 to the contrary, it is quite possible they did, because Tasmania 

 was populated at the time, whereas Kangaroo Island was out 

 of the beaten track of civilization, and the extinct Emus of both 

 islands may have been allied forms if not identical. 



Dr. A. B. Meyer, of the Royal Zootogical Museum, Dresden, 

 has contributed to The Ibis (April, 1903) a most interesting article 

 " On the Eggs of the Moa." From the facts collected by the 

 learned doctor, he finds that the eggs of the great extinct birds 

 of New Zealand are very much rarer than those of the .Hpyornis 

 of Madagascar, 36 of which are known, whereas only 3 or 4 

 perfect Moas' eggs are yet recorded, besides a dozen more im- 

 perfect or reconstructed examples. All the specimens yet 

 discovered have been found on the South Island. The first 

 nearly perfect specimen was found in 1859. It measures about 

 10 inches in length by about 7 inches in breadth, and is supposed 

 to be referable to the Dinornis novce-zcaUuidicc (Owen). It was 

 sold for .£100, and is in the Rowley collection (England). A second 

 and complete Moa's egg is in the Otago Museum. It was dis- 

 covered by a gold-dredging party on the Molyneux River in 1898, 

 and is probably that of the Pachyornis clephantopus. Another 

 perfect specimen was found in the same locality the following 

 year, and was put up at auction in England with a reserve of 

 £350. No bidder was found above £150, and it is reported that 

 the egg was returned to New Zealand. About the year 1892 

 a fourth and nearly perfect egg, supposed to be that of D. robustus, 

 was unearthed, and probably remains the property of a dredging 

 company. Owen constructed in plaster an egg of Dinornis 



