Vol. XIV. 



I9I4 



] Brasil, The Emu of King Islands Ql 



species and sub-species, D. spenceri is classified as D. minor. 

 Therefore, it seems as if Mathews has gone back to his first opinion. 

 However, let his " White-breasted Emu " be, according to him, 

 identical with D. minor, or let it constitute a distinct form, D. 

 spenceri, one point remains invariable in Mathews's mind — that 

 is, that the Emu on the right of Plate XXXVI. of the " Voyage 

 de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes " comes from King Island. 



I am going now to try to prove that it is not possible to adopt 

 this opinion, and I think that I shall succeed in doing so without 

 even drawing any arguments from the difficulty there is to 

 attribute a different origin to a specimen formally designated by 

 naturalists so careful in detail and so precise as Peron and 

 Lesueur, as having been observed in Kangaroo Island ; and this 

 difficulty should be sufficient for throwing out Mathews's suggestion. 

 I shall begin by recalling what we know of the Emus seen in King 

 Island by the French travellers, what Peron says about them in 

 his relation of the journey, the main points of the manuscript 

 document pubhshed later on by Milne-Edwards and Oustalet (of 

 which I spoke previously, and which I have with me just now). 

 The naturalists of the corvette Le Geographe, in company of 

 Lesueur, landed on King Island on loth December, 1802, and 

 re-embarked on the 23rd. During the whole of their stay on land 

 the weather was very bad. Twice Le Geographe was forced by 

 the storm to sail away from the dangerous coasts of the island, 

 leaving the unfortunate men without any arms, provisions, or 

 shelter. Undoubtedly they would have been starved to death 

 but for the opportune help given to them by some English fisher- 

 men settled there, and who v/ere the only inhabitants. The 

 torrential rains which fell unceasingly, the hurricanes which blew 

 without interruption, did not permit the pursuit of any scientific 

 researches, and it is onjy, it seems, in the meat store of the 

 fishermen that Peron's observations of King Island's Emus were 

 made. What he says of them, in the passages in which he speaks 

 in a general way of the productions of this land, does not apply 

 very well to the kind which was found there, if one may judge 

 from the text of the Havre manuscript, as well as by what 

 the discovery of the bones of D. minor has taught us. When 

 Peron speaks of " the powerful Cassowary, from 16 to 22 deci- 

 meters high (5 or 6 feet) . . . ." he is most hkely thinking 

 of the continental kind, to which undoubtedly he assimilates all 

 those belonging to the southern islands. Therefore, this detail 

 is valueless. But more important are the following passages 

 relating either to the description of the English fishermen's 

 dwellings, or to the way the latter secured the big game which 

 provided them with the meat necessary to their alimentation, or, 

 again, to the conditions of existence of Peron and his com- 

 panions : — 



" .... At the side could be seen a sort of butcher's hook, on 

 which five or six Cassowaries were hanging (p. 18). . . . As for the 

 Cassowaries and kangaroos, the fishermen, in order to catch them have 



