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The emu, or Australian ostrich, is fast disappearing from the Europeanized portion of that island continent. The cassowary, or American ostrich, cannot hold its own against the encroachments

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of man.

THE CASSOWARY.

The New Zealand and Australian apteryx is fast going the way of its gigantic predecessor, the moa; and the ostrich -the real African plumed ostrich-the bird so dear to ladies, only

manages to perpetuate his species by favour of the desert and the desert's sun.

Some little way back I felt constrained to pay an ambiguous compliment to the veracity of certain of the early Dutch travellers. I spoke of Foersch, who described the upas tree, as being a remarkably imaginative man, for example. Now, does it not seem a little curious that Dutch travellers should have been so very imaginative at the very time when Dutch painters were the very opposite? A Dutch painter of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries painted all he saw upon the field of his picture, and invented nothing, and suppressed nothing. Grand or mean, noble or ignoble, pretty or ugly, it was all the same to him. Down upon the canvas it must go, if it came within the field of his picture. In the delineation of some subjects, this realistic tendency of the Dutch school has been by some critics reprehended. All would, however, agree to think that the painter of animals cannot well be too literal in recording the characteristics they present to him. Amongst the number of Dutch animal painters we find some that were marvellous in their fidelity of representation. As examples of this tendency, Savery and Breughel may be mentioned. And now see how a Dutch painter's fidelity to truth has helped to clear from imputations of story-telling in a bad sense the characters of some old Dutch travellers. Professor Owen, whilst at the Hague, in the summer of 1848, was much struck with the minuteness and accuracy with which Savery and Breughel had painted their animals, foreign as well as native. The pictures which especially struck Professor Owen for their fidelity in this respect, were Paradisa and Orpheus charming the beasts. Inquiring how such marvellous accuracy in the delineation of foreign animals could have been compassed, Professor Owen was told that Savery and Breughel painted from real foreign animals and birds that were confined in the menagerie of Prince Maurice. Having learned thus much, the Professor deliberately sate himself

down before the Savery Orpheus, to make out the number of species which the picture evinced the artist to have had the opportunity to study alive. Judge his surprise, when in one corner of the picture he found the dodo-only three inches long, indeed, but so accurately painted that previous descriptions of the dodo were verified. Not only did it correspond with the statement given by Bonteko, but also pretty closely with Edwards's oil painting of the dodo in the British Museum, the authenticity of which has frequently been doubted. Nor does the testimony of verification supplied by the paintings of Savery and Breughel end here. What Professor Owen discovered whilst at the Hague, he communicated by letter to Mr. Broderip, who in his turn was fortunate enough to elicit still further evidence from a work of the painter's already adverted to. As it would be a pity to spoil the effect produced by the naturalist's joyous exultation on discovering his dodo portrait, the reader shall have Mr. Broderip's statement in his own words. "I little thought (the writer) when with his permission I published this graphic product of my kind friend's pen (i. e. Professor Owen's letter), what was in store for me. Not long afterwards, a friend informed me that he had seen a picture at a dealer's, painted by one of the Saverys, and that he was pretty sure there was a dodo in one corner of it. I sent for the picture, and there, sure enough, in the right-hand corner, and consequently to the left of the spectator, was the bird, in all the beauty of his ugliness. The dodo stands on one foot, with its back to the spectator, and turning round its head, which is presented with the huge bill picking the other uplifted foot. Like all the rest of the birds in this picture, which bears the name of Roland Savery, the dodo is highly finished."

And now a few words about the moa-a gigantic walking bird that lived in the New Zealand Islands a long time ago, yet not so long but that the natives still possess traditions of it. Professor

Owen had the good fortune also to establish the former existence of the moa, and, in this case, without any pictorial chart for his assistance. During the year 1839 it was, that somebody—it matters not who-returning from New Zealand, brought with him, among other things, a bone-a bone of considerable antiquity, that is to say. He took that bone to Professor Owen, and solicited the great naturalist's opinion. The bone was no less than five inches round. Was it the bone of a quadruped or of a giant man? Well, the Professor having noticed a certain honeycomb-like structure announced his belief. It was neither a quadruped's bone, nor a giant man's bone-it was the thigh bone of a bird. Some people smiled; some held their tongues; and some, but comparatively few, acquiesced in the testimony of the naturalist. The man of nature, however, scorned to do things by halves. Not content with affirming the particular bone to be the thigh bone of a bird, he described what sort of a bird it must have been: that it must have been a walking bird, for example. He moreover indicated the probable size and shape of this walking bird. "Well, it is all very pretty for you to say this, Mr. Owen," exclaimed certain of the incredulous; "prove it." And the incredulous having thrown down that gauge of defiance voted the big bone a delusion and a snare. Proof, however, was to be forthcoming, all in proper time. Eventually other big bones were discovered in New Zealand, and collected and transmitted to Professor Owen. They proved to be remnants of the same species of gigantic bird; and, being put together skeleton fashion, the naturalist's opinion was vindicated, and the carpers were silenced.

I must not terminate these remarks about walking birds, without announcing that some few years ago ostriches had been hatched in Italy; and last year, for the first time, a brood was hatched in France. The result would have happened long ago, if only the habits of ostriches had been duly reflected upon. They are, in the

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