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C1866
The Emeu
Small colonial engraving of adult Emu with six chicks. From the original edition of the Illustrated Sydney News. History of discovery: The first printed image of an Emu was made in 1789 which was first sighted on 21st January 1788 … Read Full Description
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Details
Full Title:
The Emeu
Date:
C1866
Artist:
Unknown
Condition:
In good condition.
Technique:
Hand coloured engraving.
Image Size:
95mm
x 100mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1866
Description:
Small colonial engraving of adult Emu with six chicks.
From the original edition of the Illustrated Sydney News.
History of discovery:
The first printed image of an Emu was made in 1789 which was first sighted on 21st January 1788 by surgeon Arthur Bowes, in Port Jackson and described and drawn in his diary on the transport ship Lady Penrhyn. His diary entry describes his observations The animals we saw during our stay in New Holland……-a bird of a new genus, as large and high as a Ostrich.
Modern binomial name Dromaius novaehollandiae
First described Latham 1790
Distribution Australia wide (not including Tasmania)
Reference Reader’s Digest Book of Birds 2nd ed 1986 Page p.45, ill. pp. 44 & 45
Biography:
Smyth, Arthur Bowes (1750–1790)
Smyth was an English surgeon who lived at Tolleshunt D’Arcy and practised
there at least between 1778 and 1783.
In 1787 he was appointed a surgeon
in the Lady Penrhyn in the First Fleet. He took charge of the
prisoners when the convicts’ surgeon on board, Dr Alltree, fell ill at
Tenerife. Under the name of Arthur Bowes, as he was known in the colony,
from 22 March 1787 to 12 August 1789 he kept a journal which included a
record of the events of the voyage and the first weeks in New South
Wales. While still in Sydney, on 19 March he reported on the birds of
Lord Howe Island where Lieutenant Henry Ball had landed from the Supply on the way back from Norfolk Island.
Smyth left Sydney in the Lady Penrhyn
on 20 April, and the journal is most significant for its descriptions
of bird life at Port Jackson and Lord Howe Island, where the ship called
on her way to China. He collected curios and natural history specimens
on his excursions at Port Jackson, in a way typical of the
non-scientific collecting done in the colony before George Caley arrived in 1800. Bowes must have been one of the first white men to see
an emu, of which he made a drawing. While on Lord Howe Island he made
the earliest known drawing of the now extinct white Gallinule, and
observed the Bell magpie or Currawong and four now rare or extinct
birds, which have been identified as the Lord Howe Island pigeon, the
booby, the Lord Howe Island rail or woodhen, and an extinct species of parakeet.
He died soon after his return to England and was buried at
Tolleshunt D’Arcy on 31 March 1790.
Reference: Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, (MUP), 1967
