888 



SOLITAIRE 



great work in 1770, though the writer ^ regarded much of it as 

 fabulous, and hence, through Latham, Gmelin in 1788 accorded 

 technical recognition to Leguat's bird as Didus solitarius, while 

 Strickland, sixty years after, referring it to a distinct genus, 

 Pezophap.% continued the latter's name for it as an English word. 



For want of space the de- 

 lightful account given by its 

 discoverer cannot be here 

 reproduced.'^ Except a 

 brief notice by D'Heguerty 

 (Mem. Soc. Sc. Nancy, i. 

 p. 79) in 1751, which adds 

 little to Leguat's account, 

 and a manuscript report by 

 Pingre, who observed the 

 transit of Venus of 1761 

 in Rodriguez, to the effect 

 that the bird was then sup- 

 posed still to exist though 

 withdrawn to the most 

 inaccessible parts of the 



yeeres' Travaile, p. 211) must 

 have heard of it in 1634 or 

 earlier, but thought it was the 

 Dodo (p. 15S), which certainly 

 was not in "Dygarroys" ( = 

 Rodriguez), tliough it possibly 

 gave the hint to Nevile. 



1 In the "Table" of the 

 original edition the article is 

 assigned to Buffon; butSonnini, 

 in his edition (iv. p. 343), says 

 it was by Gueneau de Mont- 

 beillard. 



^ Voyage et avantures de 

 Fran<;ois Leguat, &c. 2 vols. 



Solitaire of Rodriguez. (After Leguat.) 



Londres : 1708. An English translation, made, according to Fennell {Field-Nat. 

 ii. p. 185, note), by one Thompson, appeared in London the same year ; and this 

 has been edited for the Hakluyt Society (in 2 vols. 1891) with notes and many 

 additional illustrations by Ca})t. Oliver. Copious extracts from both French and 

 English versions are given by Strickland ( The Dodo and its Kindred, pp. 46-50), 

 and some passages have often been i-eprinted elsewhere. A Dutch translation 

 was published at Utrecht in 1708, and a German at Frankfurt and Leipzig in 

 1709. A mutilated French version appeared at Paris, without date, but after 

 1759, and was reissued there in 1883, with notes by M. Eugene MuUer. M. 

 Theodore Sauzier has done a great service to the admirers of Leguat by discovering 

 and reprinting a very rare tract to which he refers, Unprojetde repuhlique (Paris : 

 1887), written by Du Quesne and published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1689. 



