Page:Essays on Early Ornithology and Kindred Subjects.djvu/35

THE name 'emu' has an interesting history. It occurs in the forms 'emia' and 'eme' in Purchas his Pilgrimage, in 1613. 'In Banda and other islands,' says Purchas, 'the bird called emia or eme is admirable.' We should probably pronounce 'eme' in two syllables, as e-mé. This eme or emia was doubtless a cassowary—probably that of Ceram. The idea that it was a native of the Banda Group appears to have existed in some quarters at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the idea was assuredly an erroneous one. So large a struthious bird as the cassowary requires more extensive feeding-grounds and greater seclusion than was to be found in any island of the Banda Group, and, as at the present day so in the past, Ceram was the true home of the Malayan cassowary, which found and which finds in the extensive forests of that island the home adapted to its requirements. It is, however, equally certain that at an early date the Ceram cassowary was imported into Amboyna and probably into Banda also, and we know of an early instance of its being introduced into Java, and from Java into Europe. When the first Dutch expedition to Java had reached that island, and when the vessels of which it was composed were lying at anchor off Sindaya, some Javans brought a cassowary on board Schellenger's ship as a gift, saying that the bird was a rare one and that it swallowed fire. At least, so they were understood to say, but that they really did say so is somewhat doubtful.