Nests and Eggs of Emus and Cassowary of Australia, 231 
Cassowary can push its way through the entanglement of 
vines, canes, and creepers in such a rapid, free, and easy 
manner as it is credited with. To aid the bird in so quickly 
threading the scrub when pursued, no doubt its sloping 
horny helmet, and the long quills of the spurious wings, play 
an important part. 
I had the opportunity of viewing a handsome pair of 
full-grown Cassowaries, the property of Mr B. Gulliver, at 
Acacia-Vale Nurseries, Townsville (Queensland). They were 
beautiful creatures in their jet-black, hair-like coats, shorter 
in build, and with much more powerful legs than the Emu. 
The head and neck were destitute of feathers, but covered with 
a beautiful blue and pink skin, there being also two small 
pinkish lobes of wattle hanging from the breast or neck. 
The birds stood about 4 feet high, but when fully erect were 
a foot higher. Their horny helmets should have been about 
6 inches in length, but these headpieces had been considerably 
battered down in various duels, for both birds were males. 
To fight one another they have been observed to clear at a 
single bound a dividing fence 7 or 8 feet high. They were 
fed almost entirely on the fruit of the papaw-tree (Carica 
papaya), cut up into morsels about an inch or so square, 
which are taken between the points of the mandibles, and by 
a graceful uplifting of the head jerked into the gullet. When 
a bird is scared or alarmed it makes a most peculiar ventri- 
loqual sound, repeated five or six times. To produce this 
noise the bird is seemingly put to an immense effort. It 
doubles its head downwards, placing its skin close to its 
neck, all the back and rear feathers being erected, while, with 
spasmodic jerks, it pumps, so to speak, a sound resembling 
distant thunder. Mr B. Gulliver captured these Cassowaries 
when young in the Cairns district in October 1883. 
The handsome pair of eggs which I described in 1886 were 
from the collection of Dr T. P. Lucas. The following year 
Mr Joseph Barker, in my interest, annexed from the natives 
(aborigines), just as they were about to cook and eat them, 
two specimens, fresh and beautiful. The eggs, which were 
found in the Cardwell district 3rd October, reached my 
collection safely. Mr Barker, who is a keen field observer, 
