235 



DROMAIUS PERONI nom. nov. 



(Plate 40.) 



Casoar de la Nouvelle Hollande Peron, Relat. Voy. Terr. Austr. I p. 467, pi. XXXVI 

 (1807). 



Dromoius ater Vieillot, Gal. des Ois, pi. 226 (not text). 

 Dromaeus ater Blyth, Ibis 1862, p. 93. 



IT is most unfortunate that the larger number of authors have neglected 

 to go carefully into the synonymy of this bird ; if they had done so it 

 would not have been necessary, after 81 years, to reject the very 

 appropriate name of ater, and to rename the Emu of Kangaroo Island. 

 Vieillot, in the Nouveau Dictionnaire D'Histoire Naturelle X, page 212, 

 distinctly states that his Dromaius ater was a name given to Latham's 

 Casuarius novaehollandiae, and makes no mention of Peron or of the Isle 

 Decres. 



The figures in Peron 's work of the adult male and female are not 

 good, but those of the young and nestlings appear to me to be very accurate, 

 and the plate in the Galerie des Oiseaux is quite excellent. The latter and 

 my own are taken from the type specimen in the Paris Museum, while 

 the plate in Peron was done by Lessieur from a series of sketches from 

 life made by himself on Decres Island and in the menagerie of the Jardin 

 des Plantes. The only known specimens of this extinct species are the 

 mounted skin and skeleton in Paris and the skeleton in the Florence Museum. 

 All these are what remain of the three living birds brought to Paris by 

 Peron, and no other authentic specimens exist anywhere. There is in the 

 Museum at Liverpool a full-grown, though immature Emu of the same size 

 as Dromaius fieronii, but owing to its proportionally longer legs and very 

 scanty plumage it is not absolutely safe to identify it as a second mounted 

 specimen of D. fieronii. I will recur to this lower down. 



Description of adult male (ex Cat. Birds Brit. Mus.) : Similar to 

 D. novaehollandiae, but much smaller, and with feathers of the neck entirely 

 black ; feathers of the body brown fulvous, with the apical half very dark 

 blackish brown ; bill and feet blackish, naked skin of the sides of the neck 

 blue. Total length about 55 inches, tarsus 11-40, culmen 236. 



Immature in first plumage entirely sooty black. Nestling whitish with 

 longitudinal bands of rufous brown. In addition to Decres or Kangaroo 

 Island, also Flinders, King Islands, and Tasmania had Emus living on them 



