Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/288

 common fowl and the pheasant do not only solace their females with their crowing, but farther give them the faculty of pro- ducing eggs by its means ; for when the cock crows in the night some of the hens perched near him bestir themselves, clapping their wings and shaking their heads ; shuddering and gesticu- lating as they are wont to do after intercourse.

A certain bird, as large again as a swan, and which the Dutch call a cassowary, was imported no long time ago from the island of Java, in the East Indies, into Holland. Ulysses Aldrovan- dus 1 gives a figure of this bird, and informs us that it is called an emeu by the Indians. It is not a two-toed bird, like the ostrich, but has three toes on each foot, one of which is fur- nished with a spur of such length, strength, and hardness, that the creature can easily kick through a board two fingers' breadth in thickness. The cassowary defends itself by kicking forwards. In the body, legs, and thighs it resembles the ostrich ; it has not a broad bill like the ostrich however, but one that is rounded and black. On its head, by way of crest, it has an orbicular protuberant horn. It has no tongue, and devours everything that is presented to it stones, coals, even though alight, pieces of glass all without distinction. Its feathers sprout in pairs from each particular quill, and are of a black colour, short and slender, approaching to hair or down in their characters. Its wings are very short and imperfect. The whole aspect of the creature is truculent, and it has numbers of red and blue wattles longitudinally disposed along the neck.

This bird remained for more than seven years in Holland, and was then sent, among other presents, by the illustrious Maurice Prince of Orange, to his serene majesty our King James, in whose gardens it continued to live for a period of up- wards of five years. By and by, however, when a pair of ostriches, male and female, were brought to the same place, and the cassowary heard and saw these in a neighbouring inclosure, at their amours, unexpectedly it began to lay eggs, excited, as I imagine, through sympathy with the acts of an allied genus ; I say unexpectedly, for all who saw the cassowary, judging from the weapons and ornaments, had regarded it as a male rather than a female. Of these eggs, one was laid entire, and this I

1 Ornithol. lib. xx, p. 541.