338 Mr. E. Newton's Second Visit to Madagascar. 



and I killed him. On picking him up, I found he had been 

 robbing some water- fowl's nest, his mouth and crop containing 

 three young birds, evidently taken from the egg-shell, with 

 fragments of the latter, coloured pinkish white, with red spots, 

 like that of a Water-rail or Porphyrio. We looked for the nest 

 in vain, and I presume the canoe must have passed right over it 

 and swamped it. 



On skinning the bird, I found it was a male, though in the 

 brown-streaked plumage, and therefore probably a young bird. 

 The Marmites knew the bird at once, and pronounced it to be 

 much more destructive to chickens than the " Papango"* ; it can- 

 not, however, be very common, as this is only the second example 

 of the genus I have ever met with in Madagascar. Iris yellow, 

 tip oj' beak black, base horn-colour, cere yellow, claws black. 



6. Polyboroides madagascariensis (Daudin). 

 " Feheark." 



I saw this species on two occasions about ten miles up the 

 Hivondrona, and also at Foule Point, where I observed, in a 

 freshly skinned specimen, that the legs bend back in the same 

 manner as described by Mr. Ayres (Ibis, 1859, p. 237) when 

 writing of its congener, P. typicus. 



7. ? Otus madagascariensis, A. Smith. 



Captain Anson, when close to Tamatave on his return from 

 Antananarivo, wounded a brown Owl, which he brought on 

 board the ^Gorgon' alive; but it died the first night, and the 

 Malagasy servants, from their stupid superstition, threw it over- 

 board. It appeared to me to be identical with the specimen 

 obtained by Dr. Mellerf, which was sent to England some 

 months after his return from the capital. At Ampasimaventy 

 I heard, at night, the cry of a bird, which I was told was a 

 species of " Vorondolo," but brown, and with a head like that of 

 an Ox ! Captain Anson's bird had no appearance of tufts ; it was, 

 however, hardly old enough to have shown them distinctly. 



* It is, perhaps, worth while mentioning, that a specimen of a Harrier 

 in the museum here, and which is said to have come from Reunion, is 

 labelled " Papango." 



t This was Otus madagascariensis ; see P. Z. S. 1863, p. 160, where a 

 list of Dr. Meller's collection is given. — Ed. 



