plains of the interior, during a severe drought,
and far removed from water. They feed upon
small animals of any kind—quadrupeds, birds,
snakes, lizards; and the fluid that they find
contained within their prey appears to be
sufficient for their nourishment.

Among birds of Australia we should not
forget to talk about the emeu, which, together
with the kangaroo, is giving place before the
dogs and guns of European settlers. The
kangaroo is the food of the Australian natives.
We punish them if they lay finger on our
sheep and oxen, but they cannot punish us
for the havoc we commit among the kangaroos.
"Almost every stockman," says Sir
Thomas Mitchell, "has several kangaroo
dogs, and it would be only an act of justice
towards the aborigines to prohibit white men
from killing these creatures, which are as
essential to the natives as cattle to the
Europeans."

The natives have not warred against the
emeu recklessly, lest it should be destroyed.
Emeu's flesh is forbidden to their young men,
although it is better meat than kangaroo.
The same care is taken of the ducks, which
may be eaten only by the married. The
Europeans being less particular, hunt emeus
down, wantonly, often for no better object
than their handsome feathers, or for their
flesh, which is said to resemble good beefsteak.
Emeus are able with a kick to kill a
dog, or break a horse's leg; but dogs are
taught to seize them by the neck, and in that
way overthrow them easily. The emeu may
be destined to become extinct, like the dinornis
in New Zealand,—if the dinornis be extinct.
About this gigantic bird we have a good
deal to say. In 1844, Captain Sir Everard
Home wrote: "I feel little doubt that
the dinornis exists in the Middle Island of
New Zealand, which is very thinly inhabited
and almost quite unknown; perhaps, also, in
Stewart's Island." Rumours were afloat. The
natives of the neighbourhood of Cloudy
Bay, in Cook's Straits, were said to have
informed an Englishman belonging to a
whaling party, "that there was a bird of
extraordinary size to be seen only at night on
the side of a hill near there; and that he,
with the native and a second Englishman,
went to the spot; that after waiting some
time, they saw the creature at some little
distance, which they describe as fourteen or
sixteen feet high. One of the men proposed
to go nearer and shoot, but his companion
was so exceedingly terrified, or perhaps both
of them, that they were satisfied with looking
at him, when in a little time he took the
alarm and strode away up the side of the
mountain." There is a sea-serpenty flavour
in these stories; but they smack strongly of
truth, too. The following, which is quoted
from a paper by the Reverend R. Tayler
in the "New Zealand Magazine," has points
of credibility about it:—"Mr. Meurant,
employed by the Government as native
interpreter, stated to me that in the latter end
of 1813, he saw the flesh of the moa (dinornis)
in Molyneux harbour; since that period, he
has seen feathers of the same kind in the
natives' hair. They were of a black or
dark colour, with a purple edge, having quills
like those of the albatross in size, but much
coarser. He saw a moa bone which reached
four inches above his hip from the ground,
and as thick as his knee, with flesh and sinews
upon it. The flesh looked like bull beef. The
slaves, who were from the interior, said that
it was still to be found inland. The natives
told him that the one whose flesh he had seen
was a dead one, which they had found
accidentally; that they had often endeavoured
to snare them, but without success. A man,
named George Pauley, now living in Foveaux
straits, told him that he had seen the moa,
which he described as being an immense
monster, standing about twenty feet high.
He saw it near a lake in the interior. It ran
from him, and he also ran from it."

Science has shown to our wondering eyes in
a very remarkable manner, the actual form
and structure of a bird which has never been
seen, except by the persons above-mentioned.
Not many years ago, a sailor presented
at the British Museum a huge marrow-bone
which he desired to sell, and which he had
brought from New Zealand. The officers of
that institution not usually dealing in that
class of marine stores, referred him to the
College of Surgeons, where, they said, he
would find a gentleman—one Professor Owen
—who had a remarkable predilection for old
bones. Accordingly, the sailor took his
treasure to the Professor; who, finding it
unlike any bone even he had any knowledge
of, sent the man away rejoicing with a full
pocket—rejoicing himself in the acquisition
of a new subject for scientific inquiry.
Although the bone had manifestly contained
marrow, and was therefore unlike the bones
of birds in general, Mr. Owen concluded,
from certain structural evidences, that this
bone had belonged to a bird, and a bird of a
species hitherto unknown. Those who have
ever experienced the flutter which the clue to
any discovery of a scientific character occasions,
will at once understand the excitement which
was felt by the little world of naturalists, to
whom the Professor displayed his new bone.
It was immediately figured and lithographed,
and copies, with certain instructions for
finding other such bones, were sent out to
New Zealand to be distributed wherever
Europeans had trod among the ferns of that
colony. Years passed. By and bye a very big
box arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London,
containing congeners of the sailor's marrowbone;
some of them upwards of a yard long.
Professor Owen set to work, and built up from
these bones, not one, but five (ultimately
eleven) distinct species of an extinct animal,
hitherto utterly unknown to natural history.
It must have been unable to fly (hence the