566 
FLIGHTLESS BIRDS. 
The Emeus. 
accompanied by vigorous kickings and many bendings of the neck. In spite of 
their speed, and the rapidity with which they move their limbs, cassowaries do not 
run, after the manner of an ostrich, but may be rather said to trot. 
As regards their breeding-habits in a wild state very little has been ascertained; 
although it would appear that at this season they associate only in pairs. From 
native reports concerning the rare Ceram cassowary, Mr. Wallace wrote that the 
female laid from three to live eggs, which were brooded by each sex in turn; but 
from observations made on menagerie specimens, it appears that all the work of 
hatching devolves upon the cock, the period of incubation being about seven weeks. 
Although cassowaries will lay freely, it is but seldom that the eggs are hatched in 
captivity. In colour, the latter are dark green, with the surface of the shell beauti¬ 
fully granulated, or shagreened. The young cassowaries, in which the position of 
the helmet is indicated by a flat horny plate, are carefully tended and fed by the 
cock bird until able to shift for themselves. 
Originally applied indifferently to the members of both the 
preceding and the present genus, the name emeu (which is itself a 
derivative from the Portuguese word emea, meaning apparently a crane, and then 
any large bird) is now by common consent restricted to the latter. Agreeing with 
the cassowaries in the features mentioned on p. 562, the emeus—of which the two 
species are restricted to Australia and some of the adjacent islands—are distin¬ 
guished by the absence of a helmet, the complete feathering of the head and neck, 
and the normal length of the claw of the second toe; the claws of all three toes 
being much shorter than in the allied genus. They are further characterised by the 
beak being depressed and broad, instead of narrow, compressed, and keeled; as they 
are by the absence of the bare black quills in the still more rudimentary wing. 
Standing next in point of size among living birds to the ostrich, the common emeu 
(Dromceus novai-liollandice) of Eastern Australia, has the general hue of the plumage 
light brown, mottled in some parts with grey; the individual feathers being of a 
uniform blackish grey, except near the tips, where they are black, with a broad 
subterminal band of rufous. This species which, from incessant pursuit, has been 
well-nigh exterminated even on the mainland, formerly also existed in Tasmania 
and the islands of Bass Straits, where it has completely disappeared. In Western 
Australia it is replaced by the spotted emeu (D. irroratus), a bird of more slender 
build, having the feathers barred with white and dark grey, and terminating in a 
black spot with a rufous margin. While the two sexes of the adult are nearly 
similar, the young of the common emeu have the ground-colour of the plumage 
greyish white, with two stripes of black down the back, and two others on each 
side, both being divided by a narrow median streak of white, these stripes being 
continued on to the head, where they break up into spots, while there are also 
others on the fore-neck and breast, which terminate on the thighs. Like the 
cassowaries, the emeus are represented by an extinct species from the superficial 
deposits of Australia. 
„ At one time abundant on the mainland of Australia, in the 
Habits. . 
neighbourhood of Botany Bay and Port Jackson, where it formed as 
characteristic a feature in the landscape as the kangaroos and wallabies, the emeu 
is now only to be met with in the far interior, where it is yearly becoming scarcer, 
