188 ON GENERATION. 



common fowl and the pheasant do not only solace their females 

 with their crowing, but farther give them the faculty of pro- 

 ducing eggs by its means ; for when the cock crows in the night 

 some of the hens perched near him bestir themselves, clapping 

 their wings and shaking their heads ; shuddering and gesticu- 

 lating as they are wont to do after intercourse. 



A certain bird, as large again as a swan, and which the Dutch 

 call a cassowary, was imported no long time ago from the island 

 of Java, in the East Indies, into Holland. Ulysses Aldrovan- 

 dus 1 gives a figure of this bird, and informs us that it is called 

 an emeu by the Indians. It is not a two-toed bird, like the 

 ostrich, but has three toes on each foot, one of which is fur- 

 nished with a spur of such length, strength, and hardness, that 

 the creature can easily kick through a board two fingers' 

 breadth in thickness. The cassowary defends itself by kicking 

 forwards. In the body, legs, and thighs it resembles the ostrich ; 

 it has not a broad bill like the ostrich however, but one that is 

 rounded and black. On its head, by way of crest, it has an 

 orbicular protuberant horn. It has no tongue, and devours 

 everything that is presented to it stones, coals, even though 

 alight, pieces of glass all without distinction. Its feathers 

 sprout in pairs from each particular quill, and are of a black 

 colour, short and slender, approaching to hair or down in their 

 characters. Its wings are very short and imperfect. The whole 

 aspect of the creature is truculent, and it has numbers of red 

 and blue wattles longitudinally disposed along the neck. 



This bird remained for more than seven years in Holland, 

 and was then sent, among other presents, by the illustrious 

 Maurice Prince of Orange, to his serene majesty our King 

 James, in whose gardens it continued to live for a period of up- 

 wards of five years. By and by, however, when a pair of 

 ostriches, male and female, were brought to the same place, and 

 the cassowary heard and saw these in a neighbouring inclosure, 

 at their amours, unexpectedly it began to lay eggs, excited, as 

 I imagine, through sympathy with the acts of an allied genus ; 

 I say unexpectedly, for all who saw the cassowary, judging from 

 the weapons and ornaments, had regarded it as a male rather 

 than a female. Of these eggs, one was laid entire, and this I 



1 Ornithol. lib. xx, p. 541. 



