OCR Text |
Show 1875.] LIVING IN THE SOCIETY'S GARDENS. 85 origin, I made a careful examination of the specimen in company with the Superintendent, and at once decided that it was not a Mooruk (Casuarius bennetti), although closely allied to that species in form and structure. It, in fact, more nearly resembles Westerman's Cassowary (C. westermanni, mihi, P.Z.S. 1874, p. 248*), but is very differently coloured in the naked parts of the throat, as will be seen by the drawings which I now exhibit. In C. westermanni (Plate XIX.) the throat is blue and the hinder part of the neck deep orange-red. In the new species, which I propose to call C. picticollis (Plate XVIII.) the middle of the throat is red, and the hinder part of the neck bright blue. There are, besides, minor differences, which will be evident on comparing the two drawings. Now, so far as I know, these colours in the naked parts of the Cassowaries are quite constant; and I can hardly doubt therefore that we have here to deal with different species. In C. bennetti, of which several specimens have lived in our Gardens, the whole throat and hind neck are alike blue. The three non-carunculated Cassowaries known to m e may therefore be diagnosed as follows:- 1. C. bennetti: gula et cervice postica ca-ruleis. 2. C. westermanni: gula cserulea, cervice postica rubra. 3. C. picticollis: gula rubra, cervice postica caerulea. In order to settle, if possible, the question whether C.papuanus of Rosenberg (a fourth described species of this section) is really different from C. westermanni, I requested Mr. Smit, when he visited Leyden in August last, to bring me a coloured figure of the head and neck of the typical specimen of that species in the Leyden Museum. I now exhibit Mr. Smit's drawing, from which it would seem that, although it is quite evident that the two species are very nearly related, unless the naked parts have been wrongly coloured in the stuffed specimen, C. papuanus may be, as politely suggested by Schlegelf "suivant les principes des amateurs d'ornithologie," different from, although it is certainly very nearly allied to, C. westermanni. This may well be the case, if it should turn out, as suggested by Dr. Meyer (Sitz. Akad. Wien, lxix. p. 217), that C. westermanni is the Cassowary of the island of Jobie, and C. papuanus that of the mainland of North New Guinea. C. picticollis comes, as we know, from the extreme south of N e w Guinea, and C. bennetti from New Britain. Besides C. picticollis we have recently received two other important additions to the series of living Cassowaries-namely, a young example of C. uniappendiculatus, presented by Capt. Moresby, of H.M.S. 'Basilisk,' in August last*];, and a young Australian Cassowary (C. australis), just received from the Marquis of Normanby, lately Governor of Queensland. The former bird, as Dr. Bennett tells me, was obtained by Captain Moresby from the natives at Cornwallis Island, in Torres Straits, but was stated to have been originally brought from the adjacent * Figured, P. Z. S. 1872, pl. ix., as C. kaupi. t Mus. d. Pays-Bas, Struthiones, p. 12 (1873). + See P. Z. S. 1874, p. 495. |