KING ISLAND EMU. 
There is much difficulty in determining the question whether the Dwarf 
Emus of King and Kangaroo Islands differed markedly in plumage, but I 
believe that this was the case. As the black-breasted bird in the Paris 
Museum is certainly from Kangaroo Island, and it is hardly possible that two 
species were found there, I think the white-breasted bird must have been 
the representative Dwarf Emu of King Island.* 
It should be observed that Latham named the Dwarf Emu the Van 
Diemen’s Cassowary, without assigning any reason for the designation. The 
Emu of Tasmania, as we know now, was a big bird, nearly as large as the 
Common Emu of Australia, and fully double the size of Latham’s bird, which 
I believf3 to have been the Dwarf Emu of King Island. 
Beyond the brief note in Peron’s work that Emus were plentiful on King 
Island, nothing has been recorded of the species. 
In 1903 two bones from King Island were sent to the Melbourne Museum. 
These bones, a thigh and a portion of a pelvis, were identified at the time as 
belonging to D. novce-Tiollandioe. 
“ The remains, in a fair state of preservation, were found on the margin 
of a lagoon on the east coast. In other parts of King Island, and also on 
other large islands in Bass Strait, notably Kent Group, sand drifts sometimes 
expose remains of the Tasmanian Wombat, now extinct on all islands but Tas- 
mania itself, but this is the only occasion on which the Emu has been associated 
with them in the dune sands forming the land surface of to-day. It is significant 
that the specimens show no difference from the corresponding bones of the 
mainland Emu, from which, then, the Tasmanian variety, extinct only since 
the white man’s advent, could not have essentially differed.”*]' 
The following comparative measurements give some idea of the difference 
in size, between D. minor and two of its allies. They are taken from the 
works of Professor Milne-Edwards and Dr. Oustalet, and Professor Baldwin 
Spencer : — 
D. novce-hollandice 
D. parvulus 
D. minor . . 
Tibia. 
373 mm, 
342 mm. 
330 mm. 
Tarso-metatarsus. 
340 mm. 
290 mm. 
280 mm. 
Femur. 
210 mm. 
180 mm. 
180 mm. i\ 
Professor Spencer’s diagnosis of D. minor is as follows : — 
Smaller than D. ater. Tibia not or only slightly exceeding 330 mm. in 
greatest length. Tarso-metatarsus not exceeding 280 mm. in greatest length. 
Pelvis, length not or only slightly exceeding 280 mm. 
* In Vol. II., p. 13, of Peron’s work it is stated that Lesueur drew the natural history specimens from hfe 
and the Plate was certainly drawn from a hving bird and not from a stuffed specimen. 
f A. G. Campbell, Emu, III., p. 113 (1903). This was written before it was known that the Tasmanian 
and King Island birds were different from D. novce-hollandice. 
25 
