440 CLASS AVES. 



The inhabitants of Paraguay strip the neck and a part of 

 the breast of the nandus ; and having stretched the skin and 

 made it supple, they form it into purses. They send into 

 Spain the wing-quills, the barbs of which are divided, and 

 they are made into ornamental plumes, &c. 



The name of the Cassowary, as we have seen in the text, 

 is originally Malay. For a long time but a single species 

 was known ; and the corneous casque with which the head is 

 surmounted, formed of itself a sufficient character to distin- 

 guish it from other terrestrial birds, whose wings were unfit 

 for the purposes of aerial locomotion. But a bird of this 

 description has been found in New Holland, with wings of 

 the same kind, but not furnished with the corneous casque, or 

 fleshy membranes, which, in the cassowary of the East Indies, 

 descend from the head as far as the middle of the neck. As 

 characters common to the two species, we find the substance 

 of the bill very hard, the point of each mandible slightly 

 notched towards its extremity, the feathers resembling hair 

 or manes, the wings shorter, and the legs thicker and shorter 

 than those of the ostrich. The tongue is denticulated, and 

 very short, and the intestines are also shorter in proportion 

 to the general size than in the last mentioned bird. They 

 have not, like it, any intermediate stomach between the crop 

 and gizzard, and the cloaca is not larger than in other 

 birds. 



Although many of the facts known with respect to the casso- 

 wary of the East Indies may, perhaps, be equally applicable 

 to that of New Holland, yet as they have not been verified 

 by comparison, Ave shall confine our notices of them to our 

 account of the first species, which we shall designate by the 

 name of Emu, which was originally bestowed upon it by the 

 Portuguese. 



This bird is nearly as bulky as the ostrich, but not so tall. 

 The young differs from the adult by the absence of the 



