EMU. 
1859. The specimen had been received by him, along with some others, 
from the interior of South Austraha. 
Mr. Bartlett, who was a minute observer of birds, pointed out that he 
had examined three specimens of this Emu, two of which were adult, and the 
third immature, the latter about two-thirds grown. This young bird was 
said by him to show the transverse bars (the character on which the species was 
founded) as distinctly as the old birds. 
Gould never figured D. irroratus as a distinct species, but states that he has 
seen both adult and young examples, and had no doubt that it was distinct 
from the ordinary D. novce-hollandice. He was, moreover, almost equally 
certain that it was confined to the Western division of Australia. 
The young and old birds spoken of by Gould were no doubt the specimens 
in the possession of his old friend Bartlett. At the same time it was 
doubtless Gould’s statement of his convictions that D. irroratus was the 
Western Australian bird that has led so many naturalists to follow his record, 
although Bartlett expressly stated that the original specimen came from the 
interior of South Australia. 
Dr. Sclater likewise had no doubt as to the distinctness of D. irroratus, and 
in his memoir on Struthious birds* he states that two young birds had been 
received at the Gardens from Swan River, and that they were darker than the 
Common Emu in the same state of plumage. He also mentions a specimen in 
the Gardens of the Amsterdam Zoological Society, which had been received 
from Albany in Western Australia, and he points out the differences in plumage 
between the eastern and western forms of Emu, especially as regards the more 
slender size of D. irroratus, which had longer and thinner tarsi with longer and 
much more slender toes, and smaller tarsal scutes ; the iris was pale hazel 
in Z>. irroratus, instead of reddish-brown, as in D. novce-hollandioe. 
Since Mr. Dudley Le Souef has proved that the Spotted Emu is the young 
of the common species, the range of the former becomes merged in that of the 
latter. I give below in full the account of the life-history of this species, 
written by Mr. M’Lennan,! a very observant field-naturalist:— 
“ I have reason to think that in selecting its nesting-place the Emu has 
some strange foreknowledge of the weather — call it instinctive or what you 
please — because I have noticed that in seasons which have turned out very 
wet the bird frequently builds its nest on high ground, and, as the nesting season 
begins often as early as the month of June, and extends to November, the 
nest site has to be selected before the winter and spring rains have fairly set 
in. The nest is generally placed amongst low scrub upon a slope facing the 
rising sun ; but in seasons which afterwards turned out to be exceptionally dry 
* Transactions of the Zoological Society, Vol. IV. (1862). 
t C. H. M’Lennan, Emu, VIII., p. 42 (1908) 
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