MO AS. 43 



I found the cassowaries to be excellent swimmers, and frequently tracked them 

 across a good-sized creek or river. Their note, most usually emitted by the male, is a 

 scries of harsh, guttural, prolonged croakings, quickly repeated, and continued for 

 about three minutes ; it is very loud, and may be detected across the water, at a dis- 

 tance of at least three miles, on a still night. I have listened to its resounding through 

 the scrubs at a distance of one and one half miles on land, and then thought it close, 

 and one of the most unearthly noises I ever heard. 



They breed during the months of August and September. The nest consists of a 

 depression among the fallen leaves and debris, always in the most dense part, and well 

 concealed by entangled masses of vegetation. The eggs were five in number in the 

 only two instances recorded, and, in both cases, one of the eggs in each set differed 

 from the other, being of a light-green color, and having a much smoother shell. 



The young are of a dull rusty brown. After the second season, at the age of 18 

 to 24 months, the black feathers predominate, and the helmet, which has hitherto been 

 undeveloped, more like the shield of a coot, begins to show a keel or ridge in the centre, 

 which rapidly increases in height. The skin round the head begins to become wrinkled 

 and colored, varying from bluish-green to orange on the lower part, and bright blue on the 

 sides of the neck, the wattles becoming carmine. The helmet still remains compara- 

 tively small and undeveloped long after the wattles and naked parts of the neck 

 become colored. I believe that the helmet does not attain its full size until the fourth 

 or fifth year at least. In traversing the scrubs the head is carried low to the ground, 

 and the vines and branches of trees striking the helmet slide over it on to the back. 

 Otherwise in the dense vine-scrubs bordering the Herbert River and elsewhere, pro- 

 gress would be greatly impeded ; but as it is, the cassowaries traverse the scrubs with 

 wonderful speed, jumping over fallen trees and logs when in the way. 



The Superfamily of extinct birds DINORNITHOIDE^E, which, by some authors 

 is regarded as having ordinal value, under the name of Immanes, inhabited Australia 

 and especially New Zealand during a not so very distant period, geologically speaking. 

 They were first introduced to the scientific world by Professor Richard Owen in 1839, 

 who designated them by the name Dinornis, giant bird (from the Greek demos, 

 tremendous, formidable), and are now generally known as moas, the name used by the 

 Maori, the natives of Xew Zealand. Moa is the equivalent of the Polynesian word 

 " toa," which means the domestic fowl, a significant fact, as it shows that the Maoris 

 found the giant birds alive when they immigrated into the islands. 



The moas form one of the most interesting groups in ornithology, not only because 

 they help to fill a gap between the other Struthious birds, particularly the Casuaroi- 

 deae, and the wonderful kiwis, or Apteryges, but also because they are an extreme 

 example of the feathered, and therefore originally flying, bird-type, becoming modified 

 into an animal bound and fitted as exclusively to the ground as the horse or the elephant. 

 And, elephant-birds, indeed, might we call them, were it not that this name would even 

 better fit another group of extinct Struthious birds, the ^Epiornithes from Madagascar. 

 The moas show the extreme reduction of the wing among birds, their fore-limbs 

 being nearly as much atrophied as are the hind-limbs of the whale. By long disuse, 

 the wings, as they became useless for the acquisition of food, and unnecessary for 

 escaping danger, since no enemies existed, would become enfeebled and ultimately 

 reduced to mere rudiments, while "the legs, then monopolizing the functions of loco- 

 motion, would attain, through the concomitant force and frequency of exercise, propor- 

 tional increase of power and size." (Owen.) 



