known. Mr. M'Gowan, speaking from memory, considers it was quite as large as the mainland species. This bird was supposed to be the last of the Tasmanian Emus, but as apparently nothing authentic is known as to where it really came from, it may very probably have been imported from Australia, as there are records of Emus having been sent across to Tasmania over fifty years ago from Victoria.
Two eggs are known to be in existence. Both are considerably smaller than those of the mainland variety, one measuring 4.85 x 3.40 inches, and the other 4.80 x 3.50 inches, whereas the size of a typical egg of the mainland Emu is 5.56 x 3.63 inches, which would seem to point to the insular bird itself being also smaller, but two eggs are hardly sufficient to prove the point.
Mr. H. H. Scott, the Curator of the Victoria Museum, Launceston, kindly forwarded me a bone he had found in a limestone quarry. It is the femur of an Emu, but is too damaged to be of any value, except that it is smaller than those from the mainland.
Emus were originally plentiful in Tasmania, as they are often mentioned by early settlers. For instance, the late Rev. R. Knockwood mentions an Emu and six young ones in his diary in 1803, and Mr. T. Stephens, of Adelaide-street, Hobart, has kindly sent me the following notes regarding them. Mr. John Meredith, of Cambria, East Coast, says:—"I remember perfectly Emus being caught in this neighbourhood prior to 1830, and for a few years subsequently also between this place and Avoca. I saw a pair at Circular Head on 'Black Thursday' (1851). They were full grown, and had with them half a dozen young ones. The old birds had been caught when young near Circular Head and reared and tamed."
Mr. Ransom, of Killymoon, in the Fingal district, remembers hunting Emus with kangaroo dogs about 1840, when he was a young man of 18. He remembers Captain Hepburn, of Roy's Hill, finding an Emu's nest with eight or nine eggs. A little later these were hatched under a Turkey hen. From these were bred others, and a pair of them was given to the late Baron von Steiglitz, of Killymoon, one of which survived until 1873, when it was drowned in trying to cross a flooded river. With its death, the Tasmanian Emu, Mr. Ransom believes, became extinct.
An old resident of Avoca, who knew Captain Hepburn, used to say that the Tasmanian Emu was much taller than the Australian, but the general opinion of old colonists is that the two species were identical.
In the "thirties" they were habitually hunted and killed for food on the east coast and elsewhere. Gould, writing about 1846, says that the Emus were then almost extirpated from Tasmania. He clearly regarded them as of the same species as those of Australia. Mr. Stephens also says that in the early
