SNO W-BIRD— SOLITAIRE 887 



and Australia. In all of these it appears that the female is larger 

 and more brilliantly coloured than the male, and in the last two 



species she is further dis- 

 tinguished by what in most 

 ]>irds is emphatically a mas- 

 ^^^ — - - online property, though its 



, . „ . use is here unknown, — 



Bill of Painted Snipe. (After bwainson.) 



namely a complex trachea, 

 while the male has that organ simple. He is also believed to 

 undertake the duty of incubation. 



SNOW-BIRD, a name variously applied in different parts of the 

 world, but perhaps originally to the Snow-BUNTING, Pledrophanes 

 nivalis, which is also known as SNOW-FINCH (through that name 

 being by some writers assigned to Montifringillo, nivalis of the Alps, 

 which is often mistaken for it) and ' SNOW-FLAKE. SNOW- 

 COCK is an Anglo-Indian name for TetraoqaJlus Jiimalayensis, 

 which others call SNOW-PARTRIDGE or SNOW-PHEASANT, 

 but the last is restricted by some to the birds of the beautiful genus 

 Crossojjtilwn, 



SOLAN-GOOSE (Icel. Sula, Gael. Siilaire), often spelt Soland, 

 a very common name for the Gannet. The supposition that the 

 bird takes its name from the channel known as the Solent has 

 nothing to justify it. 



SOLDIER-BIRD, a name in Australia for Myzomela sanguinoleuta, 

 also called Blood-bird (p. 44), one of the 3Ieliphagidm (Honey- 

 eater, p. 428). 



SOLITAIRE,^ the name used by the French colonists for the 

 Didine bird of Bourbon (Extermination, p. 217), as we learn 

 from Du Bois (Voyages fails par le Sieur D. B. Paris : 1674, p. 170) 

 and Carre {Voyages dans les Indes Orientales, Paris : 1699, i. p. 12) 

 who were there in 1668 and the following years. In 1691 Leguat 

 arrived in Rodriguez, Avhere he resided more than two years, and 

 in the narrative of his adventures he applied the same name to the 

 Didine bird he found there, of which he is ^the first known to have 

 given an account.' This was rescued from obscurity by Buffon's 



^ According to Littre the first application of the word to a Bii'd is in the 

 Psalter (Ps. 101, 8, or 102, 7 of the Anglican version), the species there men- 

 tioned having been long identified with the Blue Rock -Thrush, Monticola 

 cyamis. The name is also used in Jamaica (Gosse, B. Jam. p. 200) for Myiadectes 

 soHtarius, possibly one of the A mpdidse, and has been carried on by Dr. Sliarpe 

 {Cat. B. Br. Mua. vi. pp. 370-377) to other species of the genus. 



- I cannot but suspect there was some other, from what is said of a land-bird 

 that could not fly by the author of Tlie Isle of Fines, a fictitious work ascribed by 

 Wood {Athen. Oxon. 918 ; cf. Rigg, Diet. Nat. Biogr. xl. pp. 259, 260) to Henry 

 Nev-ile, of which two editions appeared in 1668, Herbert {A llelation of some 



Cf- ecrW^at 



