66 THE AUSTRAL AVIAN RECORD [Vol. I 



NOTE ON THE COLORATION OF THE HEAD AND 

 NECK OF THE AUSTRALIAN CASSOWARY. 



(Plate 1.) 



When I published the account of this bird in the first 

 Part of the Birds of Australia, I was dependent upon 

 skins and living specimens purporting to have originally 

 come from Australia. Receipt of authentic wild-killed 

 skins shows the coloration to have been different 

 from that of these supposed Australian living birds. I 

 am giving this note, and want information as to the 

 correctness of my judgment as to the colours in the living 

 bird. I however note that Meston (Proc. Roy. Soc. 

 Queens., Vol. X., p. 62, 1894) has written : " The taxi- 

 dermist has, so far, failed to reproduce the beautiful 

 scarlet and orange colour, and marvellous opalescent 

 shades of light and dark blue on the head and neck . . . 

 The two long wattles on the throat are found on both 

 male and female. Some are destitute of this appendage." 



Rothschild, in his Monograph of the Cassowaries (Trans. 

 Zool. Soc. (Loncl.), Vol. XV., 1900) gave coloured repre- 

 sentations of the heads of many of the species, and the 

 figure there given from living specimens (Plate XXV.) does 

 not agree with the present birds. From an examination 

 of those figures C. c. intensus would seem to be the nearest, 

 the most noticeable difference being in the colour of the 

 appendages ; while C. c. violicollis seems the next most 

 like. However, in the Bull. Brit. Orn. Club., Vol. XXIX., 

 pp. 50-52, 1912, Rothschild has rearranged his ideas, 

 and has there made C. intensus a subspecies of C. bicar- 

 unculatus while retaining C. violicollis and C. johnsonii 

 as subspecies of C. casuarius. I cannot at this time 

 judge of the correct disposition of C. johnsonii, and 

 therefore simply put on record the coloration of the head 

 and neck as far as can be gathered from examination of 

 the dried skin. 



The front and sides of the neck, as well as the whole 

 of the sides of the head and nape, appear to have been 



