William Davies — Fossil Remains of Emu. 265 



IV. — Note on Remains of the Emu from the Wellington Caves, 

 New South Wales. 



By William Davies, F.G.S. 



A FEW bones of birds are recorded by Mr. Gerard Krefft ^ as 

 having been found in association with the remains of the 

 extinct mammalia, which abound in the breccias of the caves and 

 fissures in the limestone rocks of the Wellington Valley, New South 

 Wales. The bird bones belong to various genera and species, but 

 only those of the Emu seem, as yet, to have been identified, and 

 these were in the possession of the late Eev. W. Branthwaite Clarke.- 

 They do not appear to have been described, nor is the number of 

 fragments in the collection stated. Unfortunately Mr. Clarke's 

 valuable collection was deposited for exhibition in the " Palace 

 Garden," a temporary building erected for the Intercolonial Exhi- 

 bition at Sydney in 1879-80, and was consumed in the disastrous 

 fire which destroyed the building and its contents soon after its close ; 

 and, as regards Mr. Clarke's specimens, the destruction of the 

 material evidence on which the early appearance of the Emu in 

 Australia was founded. However, there is preserved in the palason- 

 tological collections in the British Museum, South Kensington, a 

 portion of a shin bone, that I discovered some years ago in a 

 collection of fragmentary remains from the Wellington caves, pre- 

 sented to the National Collection by the Trustees of the Australian 

 Museum, Sydney. The specimen is the distal end of a right tibia, 

 somewhat mutilated, but is interesting as being additional evidence, 

 still existing, of the Emu having been contemporary with the great 

 extinct Marsupials ; as such, and on account of the rarity of its 

 remains, I have thought it worthy of a short notice. Compared with 

 the tibia of an adult Emu [Dromaius NovcB-Hollaiidics) , it is indis- 

 tinguishable from it, but has belonged to a larger individual, as 

 shown by the annexed few measurements, in inches and tenths. 



Fossil. Eecent. 



Length of fragment 2 7 . . 



Transverse diameter at base of shaft , . 16 . . 14 



Antero-posterior diameter ditto 1 .. 8 



The condyles are too imperfect for comparative measurements, as 

 the anterior portion of the outer condyle is wanting, and the margin 

 of the inner is abraded. 



Fossil remains of birds are rare in Australia, and, with the 

 exception of the large Struthious bird (Di-omornis Australis) described 

 by Sir Eichard Owen,^ " such bones as have been found do not 

 differ much from those of living genera." * 



1 Catalogue of the Natural and Industrial Products of New South "Wales forwarded 

 to the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867, p. 112. 



- Guide to the Australian Fossil Eemains exhibited by the Trustees of the 

 Australian Museum, Sydney, 1870. 8vo. 



» Trans. Zool. Soc, 1873, vol. viii. p. 381. 



* G. Krefft, " Australian Vertebrata — Fossil and Recent," p. 37, Sydney, 1871. 



