Voi.^ ^'^1 Brasil, The Emu of King Island, g5 



Not only have all these sketches been drawn from living birds 

 — as is shown by the naturalness of their attitudes — but also from 

 not very timid animals, some lying down, others browsing ; only 

 domesticated animals could be so quiet, and there is every reason 

 for thinking that the models were precisely the three birds 

 captured at Kangaroo Island, and which, brought aUve to the 

 Museum, lived there several years. In any case, these sketches 

 could not have been made at King Island, where our travellers 

 did not see any Emus in a wild state, and alive, as this has been 

 proved. This point is important, since among these drawings 

 are to be found those which served for the Plate XXXVI. of the 

 account of the journey, and they are the last two of the preceding 

 enumeration. 



Let us see now if an examination of these drawings will allow 

 a little light to be thrown on the colouring given in this plate to 

 the chest of one of the subjects — the "White-breasted." In the 

 original drawing by Lesueur the bird is exactly in the attitude 

 shown in the plate, and dimensions are absolutely alike. The 

 head and the bare part of the neck are very finely drawn and 

 well finished ; the rest of the body is much less carefully drawn, 

 and single strokes indicate here and there the general direction 

 and the thready aspect of the feathers. These strokes are more 

 numerous and thicker on the fore part of the neck and adjoining 

 part of the back and over the whole outline of the animal, which 

 they silhouette in some sort ; elsewhere they are very scarce, their 

 scarcity, or even their absence, leaving large bare spaces in the 

 drawing. One of these stretches on the side and the lower part 

 of the neck, and it is, it seems, a false interpretation of this bare 

 space by the engraver which caused him to give to the bird the 

 whitish aspect of its neck. I shall add, as a secondary detail, 

 that the feathers of the neck are much finer and longer on the 

 original drawing than on the engraved plate. 



The second sketch in the Bibhotheque du Havre represents the 

 bird lying down in the plate. It is much less finished than the 

 previous one. Only the head is carefully drawn — the rest of the 

 body is simply outlined ; moreover, a few strokes show that at 

 the lower part of the neck the feathers formed a sort of projecting 

 hood, more voluminous than is shown in the plate. 



Another point to which attention was not drawn, and which 

 deserves, nevertheless, to be examined closely. It may, supposing 

 a white-breasted Emu ever existed, make us understand what 

 it was — I mean the dimensions of the birds in Lesueur's Plate 

 XXXVI. The drawing, says the explanation, is to the scale of 

 one-tenth, which gives to the bird standing (the male) the fol- 

 lowing height above the ground : — 



Total height ... ... ... ... 130 cent. 



Height of the back ... ... ... 90 » 



These are dimensions much more considerable than those of the 

 specimen whose skin is mounted in the Museum galleries — the 



