RHEA 785 
RHEA, the name given in 1752 by Méhring! to a South- 
American bird which, though long before known and described by the 
earlier writers—Nieremberg, Marcgrave and Piso (the last of whom 
has a recognizable but rude figure of it)—had been without any 
distinctive scientific appellation. Adopted a few years later by 
Brisson, the name has since passed into general use, especially 
among English authors, for what their predecessors had called the 
American Ostrich; but on the European continent the bird is com- 
monly called Nandu,? a word corrupted from a name it is said to 
have borne among the aboriginal inhabitants of Brazil, where the 
Portuguese settlers called it Hma (cf. Emev). The resemblance of 
the Rhea to the OSTRICH was at once perceived, but the differences 
between them were scarcely less soon noticed, for some of them are 
very evident. The former, for instance, has three instead of two 
toes on each foot, it has no apparent tail, nor the showy wing- 
plumes of the latter, and its head and neck are clothed with feathers, 
while internal distinctions of still deeper significance have since 
been dwelt upon by Prof. Huxley (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1867, pp. 420- 
422) and the late Mr. W. A. Forbes (op. cit. 1881, pp. 784-787), 
thus justifying the separation of these two forms more widely even 
than as Families ; and there can be little doubt that they should be 
regarded as types of as many Orders—Sitruthiones and Rhexw—of the 
Subclass Ratira#.? Structural characters no less important separate 
the Rheas from the Emeus, and, apart from their very different 
physiognomy, the former can be readily recognized by the rounded 
form of their contour-feathers, which want the AFTERSHAFT that in 
the Emeus and CAssowARrIESs is so long as to equal the main shaft, 
and contributes to give these. latter groups the appearance of being 
covered with shaggy hair. ‘Though the Rhea is not decked with 
the graceful plumes which adorn the Ostrich, its feathers have yet 
a considerable market-value, and for the purpose of trade in them 
it is annually killed by thousands, so that it has been already 
. extirpated from much of the country it formerly inhabited,‘ and its 
total extinction as a wild animal is probably only a question of 
time. Its breeding-habits are precisely those which have been 
1 What prompted his bestowal of this name, so well known in classical 
mythology, is not apparent. 
2 The name TYouyou, also of South-American origin, was applied to it by 
Brisson and others, but erroneously, as Cuvier shews, since by that name, or 
something like it, the JABIRu is properly meant. 
3 Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, xx. p. 500. 
4 Mr. Harting, in his and Mr. De Mosenthal’s Ostriches and Ostrich Farming, 
from which the woodcut here introduced is by permission copied, gives (pp. 67-72) 
some portentous statistics of the destruction of Rheas for the sake of their 
feathers, which, he says, are known in the trade as ‘‘ Vautour” to distinguish 
them from those of the African bird. 
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