Early Accounts and Illustrations of the Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae): 1788-1798

R. J. WillisMelbourne, Victoria, Australia

It is easy to imagine the sheer exhilaration when emus were first sighted following

settlement at Port Jackson (Sydney) in 1788. Here was a bird as tall as, or taller than, a

man, flightless, that could run like a racehorse, and furthermore laid huge green eggs.

Reports of the emu appear in all of the important First Fleet journals, but much information

has been lost or obscured with time.

The emu is a ratite bird, so called because of the flat keelless breastbone. Living ratite

birds include the ostrich, rhea, cassowaries, kiwi, and emu – all birds of southern lands,

which strongly suggests a Gondwanan origin. “Emu” is not an aboriginal word, but is

Portuguese in origin, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the term “emeu” or

"emew", was applied generally to large flightless birds, notably the cassowary of the East

Indies and the rhea of South America. The word “eeme” was used by the Dutch to

describe the cassowary first seen in the sixteenth century in Batavia, and figured by de Bry

in 1602.

Emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) were not actually sighted by Europeans until early

1788. When emus were eventually seen at Port Jackson, it is not surprising that the

colonists consulted the few reference books at hand, in particular Oliver Goldsmith’s

History of the Earth and Animated Nature, which referred to the rhea as an “emu”. This

name has since stuck to the Australian bird, but only came into use from about 1830

onwards.

Whilst Vlamingh's crew saw emu tracks on 15 January 1697 in Western Australia, emus

were not recorded on other early voyages, including Cook's voyages. Thus, the earliest

descriptions appear in First Fleet journals, published and unpublished, including those of

Tench, Clark, Bradley, Smyth, Phillip. Hunter and White.

The first published illustration of an emu appeared in 1789 in Phillip's Voyage, where it was

described as the "New-Holland Cassowary". Phillip noted that the bird was shot within two

miles of the settlement at Sydney Cove1, and that it was drawn on the spot by Lt. John

Watts; this drawing, which is lost, was the basis of Mazell’s engraving in Phillip's account.

The preserved skin of this emu was presented to Phillip and then changed hands many

times: Phillip had it sent to Lord Sydney who then gave it to Joseph Banks, who

subsequently presented it to John Hunter. The surgeon John White recorded that an emu

was shot on about 1 March 1788 (according to him 30 February 1788 - a leap year), whilst

the journal of Lt. Ralph Clark (an officer aboard the transport Friendship) stated that an

emu was shot on 3 March. The journal of Lt. William Bradley also recorded the sighting of

an emu on 13 February and the shooting of an emu on 10 March, and another in October.

The most informative of the early accounts of the emu appears in the works of Watkin

Tench:

"The bird which principally claims attention is a species of ostrich, nearer to the emu

[rhea] of South America than any other we know of. One of them was shot, at a

considerable distance, with a single ball, by a convict [John McEntire of Durham,

transported for seven years] employed for that purpose by the Governor; its weight,

when complete, was seventy pounds, and its length from the end of the toe to the tip

of the beak, seven feet two inches2, though there was reason to believe it had not 1 The location is reckoned to be near the current site of the Central Railway Station.2 The height of a live emu is less than this, as the neck is normally curved.

attained its full growth. On dissection many anatomical singularities were observed:

the gall bladder was remarkably large, the liver not bigger than that of a barn-door

fowl, and after the strictest search no gizzard could be found; the legs, which were of

a vast length, were covered with thick, strong scales, plainly indicating the animal to

be formed for living amidst deserts; and the foot differed from an ostrich's by forming

a triangle, instead of being cloven. Goldsmith, whose account of the emu [i.e. a rhea]

is the only one I can refer to, says, "that it is covered from the back and rump with

long feathers, which fall backward, and cover the anus; these feathers are grey on

the back, and white on the belly." The wings are so small as hardly to deserve the

name, and are unfurnished with those beautiful ornaments which adorn the wing of

the ostrich; all the feathers are extremely coarse, but the construction of them

deserves notice - they grow in pairs from a single shaft, a singularity which the

author have quoted has omitted to remark. It may be presumed, that these birds are

not very scarce, as several have been seen, some of them immensely large, but

they are so wild as to make shooting them a matter of great difficulty. Though

incapable of flying they run with such swiftness, that our fleetest greyhounds are left

far behind in every attempt to catch them. The flesh was eaten, and tasted like beef,

(Tench 1789).”

The above account was also freely copied in subsequent compendial works such as

Adams (1793) New Royal System of Universal Geography.

The status of Watts' emu drawing remains a mystery; however, there is a surviving,

seemingly similar drawing of an emu by Arthur Bowes Smyth, surgeon aboard the convict

ship Lady Penrhyn, and a crewmate with Watts, a naval officer heading for China. Smyth

maintained a diary during the years 1787-89, of which three different copies are known.

The Mitchell Library copy alone contains a number of tipped-in drawings, including a

penned sketch of an emu. In this copy, Smyth recorded the supposed first sighting of an

emu amongst an entry for 21 January 1788, although this is evidently a summary entry

transcribed at a later date. The Mitchell Library copy is now regarded as a fair copy, as in

1964 the original copy of Smyth's journal came to light in England and was duly purchased

by the National Library of Australia. In Smyth's original journal, the first mention of an emu

appears in the entry for 5 February 1788:

"One of the Lieuts, of Marine (Mr Kallow) who had been some miles up the countr4y

saw 4 kangaroos and 2 ostriches."

This is followed by an entry for 15 February 1788, which corresponds roughly in time to

that of Lt. William Bradley:

"This day Lieut. Collins being out shooting saw 2 very large Birds of the

Cassowary kind, they had long shag [?] hair instead of feathers."

The entry for 11 March 1788 records the first shooting of an emu:

"The Bird wh. was shot lately & presented to the Governor is thought to be the Amu

described by Goldsmith (erroneous)." [The word 'erroneous' seems to have been

added later.]

While Smyth's records of emu sightings now accord with other First Fleet journals, the

significance of his drawing of the emu remains enigmatic. Hindwood (1932) believed, in

view of the definite statement of Phillip regarding Watts' drawing, that Smyth's drawing

must be a good copy; however, other authorities such as Fidlon and Ryan (1979) and

Stanbury and Phipps (1980) hold that Smyth's is the first drawing of an emu. In any case it

is certainly the earliest surviving European drawing of an emu. The engraving in Phillip

and the drawing in Smyth's diary have much in common, but as Hindwood (1932) noted,

the differences, such as in the legs, the leg scutes, toes, feathers, wings, beak, and details

of the background are of greater interest.

Textual information accompanying each is quite similar: both works give the height of the

bird as seven feet, two inches, and both state that the meat tastes like beef. Smyth refers

to the plumage as being light grey, whilst Philllip describes it as being brown and grey.

The bifurcate feathers are illustrated in Phillip, and are noted in Smyth. Smyth recorded

that "The skin is in possession of ye Governor." He also noted that the specimen shot

weighed more than 90 pounds, and that its stomach contained Blandfordia flowers.

However, the weight given by Smyth is distinctly contrary to that stated by Tench, and thus

the descriptions may have arisen from different specimens. Tench, in his subsequent book

of 1793, gives further information about emus: "The largest cassowary ever killed in the

settlement, weighed ninety-four pounds …… The food of the cassowary is either grass, or

a yellow bell-flower [Blandfordia] growing in the swamps." Whilst Blandfordia nobilis is

generally spring and summer flowering, it can be found flowering in March and April, and

indeed was collected by Banks and Solander during the period 29 April - 7 May 1770.

Smyth left Port Jackson on 3 May 1788, and thus unfortunately Blandfordia offers no

further assistance in precisely dating Smyth's drawing.

To complicate matters, there is a previously unrecorded copperplate engraving entitled "A

non descript bird found at Botany Bay from a drawing made on the spot 1792". It is

strongly reminiscent of the Smyth drawing, and it shows features which are not apparent in

the Phillip engraving, such as details of the head and neck, details of the toes, and the

wing represented by one odd feather. The leg scutes are fewer and much more robust

then in either Phillip or Smyth. The accompanying vegetation contains a Xanthorrhoea to

the left (as in Smyth) and two Blandfordia plants (but as stylised in Phillip). Text also notes

that "The bird measured seven feet two inches in height", further adds that it is "three feet

seven inches in length." and "approaches nearest to the emu of South America or

cossowary [sic] of Java." This illustration is distinctly rare, and I have been able to trace

only three other copies. It is likely a proof, and whilst intended for publication, may have

been suppressed or abandoned when it was realised by the author or publisher that by

1792 the emu was clearly no longer "non descript". A copy of the print was found in a

printer’s bound collection of sundry maps and engravings apparently from Paines (sic) New

System of Universal Geography, published by Zachariah Jackson of Dublin. A work known

as Payne’s Universal Geography was published in Dublin by Jackson between 1793 and

1794, and it is possible that the print appears, or was meant to appear, in this work. Two

versions of this rare print are now known to exist, and the information in the related print

are a bit contradictory. A mirror image with similar text was apparently published in 1791

by J. Johnson and C. Stalker of London in volume 1 of an unknown work, but likely

“Universal Geography Formed into a New and Entire System”. The title of the London print

reads: “A non-descript bird found at Botany Bay, in New South Wales, from a drawing

made on the spot”. The London print mirrors the Smyth drawing, as commonly occurs

when a copper plate is prepared after a drawing. The earlier date and the correct spelling

of “cassowary” also suggest that the London edition is the original edition, and that the

addition of the date “1792” was an embellishment made by the Dublin publisher.

By 1792, the emu was well described to English readers, firstly as a southern species of

cassowary (Phillip 1789). In 1790, the emu was formally named Struthio novaehollandiae,

which means the “ostrich of New Holland”, by John Latham (1740-1837) who described

and illustrated numerous Australian birds, including some discovered on Cook’s voyages

and many returned following the landing of the First Fleet. It was Latham who provided the

descriptions for the birds in Phillip’s Voyage (1789), including the emu. Unfortunately

Latham declined to give Latin names to the birds in Phillip and in his own monumental

General Synopsis of Birds (1781-85). Others such as Gmelin subsequently started gaining

credit for giving Latin names to numerous species that Latham had first described. This

forced Latham to rectify the situation in 1790 with publication of his Index Ornithologicus,

where Latin names were applied to birds in his Synopsis, and others newly described, such

as the emu.

A new image of the emu appeared in White's Journal and was based primarily on a

painting, by the so-called Port Jackson Painter, which survives in the collections of the

British Museum (Natural History) (Banks MS 34). There has been much interest in a

recently discovered album of watercolours (c. 1790), now acquired by the Mitchell Library

of N.S.W. They are by the noted English natural history painter Sarah Stone, who was

commissioned by notables such as John Latham and Sir Ashton Lever to paint specimens,

often simply from skins which had been sent to London. Most of the engravings in White’s

Journal are recorded as based on drawings by Sarah Stone, but as apparent with the emu,

she was able to access drawings made in the first months in the infant colony, and sent

back to London by White. While some of the bird specimens described in White’s Journal

were given Latin names by the zoologist George Shaw, none was given to the emu, likely

out of deference to Latham. Another version of this image was published in 1792 as plate

99 in The Naturalisf's Miscellany, a long-running English periodical edited by George Shaw

and F.P. Nodder, and in this case, Latham’s published name of Struthio novaehollandiae

was adopted. Much later, the emu was eventually placed in its own genus Dromaius3 , a

3 The name that actually appears in Vieillot’s text is Dromiceus, and some authors hold that this is the true generic name. However, this name does not make etymological sense, and the fact that the name Dromaius appears in the index suggests that the former is a typographical error.

name in reference to the bird’s swiftness (Vieillot 1816). Conservation of Latham’s specific

name has left us with the name of the emu as Dromaius novaehollandiae.

In the years following 1788, numbers of emu were shot, as they were objects of great

curiosity to the early colonists, and were prized as specimens in both England and Europe.

Other recorded early drawings of emus are by John Hunter and George Raper. It is little

known that the quirky drawing by Hunter served as the basis for an illustration of the emu

published several years later in David Collins’ An Account of the English Colony in New

South Wales. While it is known that the surgeon John White was responsible for sending

many paintings back to England in 1788, it less well known that there was likely a second

collection of drawings which White brought back to England on his return in 1795, although

the originals of these are now lost. However, a number of these images were reproduced

in another English periodical, the Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine, which commenced

publication in 1798. This curious publication is of anonymous authorship, and was

evidently established as cheap competitor to the Naturalist’s Miscellany. Publication

continued for about eight years, and complete sets are now extraordinarily rare. Amongst

the images presented was a new version of the emu, which was the only other image of

this remarkable bird to reach the public in the 1790’s.

Acknowledgements

I thank Mr Graeme Powell of the National Library of Australia, for assistance in tracing

references in the Smyth manuscript, and Ms Anne McCormick of Hordern House, Sydney.

References

Adams, M. 1793. The New Royal System of Universal Geography. London.

Bradley, W. 1969. A Voyage to New South Wales: the Journal of Lieutenant William

Bradley RN of HMS Sirius 1786-1792. Sydney: Ure Smith, 495 pp.

Collins, D. 1802. An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, from its first

settlement, in January 1788, to August 1801. Volume II. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies.

De Bry. 1602.

Fidlon, P.G. and Ryan, R.J. 1979. The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth: Surgeon, Lady

Penrhyn 1787-1789. Sydney: Australian Documents Library, pp. 196.

Fidlon, P.G. and Ryan, R.J. 1981. The Journal and Letters of Lt. Ralph Clark, 1784-1792.

Sydney: Australian Documents Library, 344 pp.

Goldsmith, O. 1779. History of the Earth and Animated Nature, Volume V, Second Edition.

London: J. Nourse.

Hindwood, K.A. 1932. An historic diary: the journal of the voyages of the Lady Penrhyn,

1787-1789, by Surgeon Bowes, and its relation to contemporary ornithological literature.

Emu 32: 17-29.

Hunter, J. 1793. An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk

Island. London: John Stockdale.

Latham, J. 1790. Index ornithologicus, sive Systema ornithologiae; complectens avium

divisionem in classes, ordines, genera, species, ipsarumque varietates: adjectis

synonymis, locis, descriptionibus, &c. Volume II.

Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine.

Payne, J. 1793-1794. Universal Geography. Dublin: Z. Jackson.

Phillip, A. 1789. The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay. London: John Stockdale,

pp. 298+lxxiv.

Smyth, A.B. 1787-9. Manuscript Journal in the National Library of Australia (MS 4568).

Stanbury, P. And Phipps, 1980. Australia’s Animals Discovered. Sydney: Pergamon

Press, pp. 100.

Tench, W. 1789. A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay. London: J. Debrett.

Tench, W. 1793. A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South

Wales. London.

Vieillot, L.P. 1816 Analyse D'Une Nouvelle Ornithologie Elementaire

White, J. 1790. Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales.

Illustrations

1. drawing attributed to Arthur Bowes Smyth (1788) in the Mitchell Library: A new genus of

bird at Botany Bay 1788

2. engraving: New Holland Cassowary, after a drawing by Lt. J. Watts, engraved by P.

Mazell (1789) in Phillip’s Voyage

3. drawing by John Hunter (1788-1790) in National Library of Australia: Emu of New South

Wales, watercolour 22.3 cm by 18.3 cm

4. engraving: Southern Cassowary (1792) engraved by F.P. Nodder in Naturalist’s

Miscellany vol. 3

5. engraving: Non-descript bird (c. 1792), source unknown

6. engraving: Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine, vol. 1 (1799)