Cassowary
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Cassowary. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a genus of large birds resembling the emu and the ostrich. There are several species, found chiefly in New Guinea , Australia, and intermediate islands. The common helmeted cassowary stands five feet high. It has a crested head and a bare, wattled neck of a deep blue and fiery red color, set off by a large, yellow eye an inch in diameter. The body is draped with soft, dark, hairy plumes from three to fourteen inches long. The wings are short, almost abortive, but are armed with five stiff quills with which it can strike a dangerous blow. The body and legs are stout. A strong foot is divided into three toes each armed with a stout claw, the largest, that of the inner toe, being three and one-half inches in length. The cassowary runs with swift bounds, far outstripping a horse, but, unlike the ostrich, it receives no aid from its reduced wings. It lives in the forests and parks on fruits, seeds, and the eggs of other birds. Its own eggs are green. Those of the largest species are from three to five inches in diameter. They are left in a nest on the ground to hatch, it is said, in the heat of the sun. See Ostrich ; Emu
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a bird, the Casuarius galeatus. That called in Banda, Eme or Eume, and hence by the Portuguese Emu. It is no nearly as large as an ostrich, being ostric about five feet high. It has on its head a crest helmet, or casque, and pendent caruncles like those of the turkey. In- CASSOWARY stead of having feathers on its wings like the ostrich, it has stumps somewhat resembling pendent hair, and while the ostrich has two toes on the feet, this has three, with a large claw on the inner toe. It is a native of the Indian Archipelago, where it feeds on fruits, seeds, and leaves, deposits its eggs in the sand, and runs with great rapidity when pursued. French
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account says the green eggs are "left in a nest on the ground to hatch, it is said, in the heat of the sun"; in fact the male alone incubates the clutch for about fifty days and then rears the striped chicks for months, one of the better-known cases of paternal care in birds. Modern taxonomy recognises three species instead of a vague "several" the southern or double-wattled, the northern or single-wattled, and the dwarf cassowary and DNA work has overturned the old grouping of ratites, showing that flightlessness arose repeatedly and that the cassowary's nearest relative is the emu. Both entries stress the bird's speed and its dangerous claw, and that stands: a Queensland boy was killed by a kicking cassowary in 1926 and a Florida keeper in 2019, though the claim that it "far outstrips a horse" is generous for a bird that tops out near 30 mph. What neither writer could know is the bird's ecological role: the southern cassowary is now protected as endangered in Australia and valued as a keystone disperser of large rainforest seeds that nothing else can swallow.
Written for this edition, 2026.