SOLITAIRE 891 



almost every boue ^ of the Solitaire's skeleton, it is not easy to 

 picture its appearance in our imagination. Whatever be its source, 

 the figure given by him, and here reproduced as the only one 

 professing any originality, must be a caricature,^ for it wholly wants 

 the beauty which he says was so characteristic of the bird. All 

 that can be said with certainty seems to be that it had nothing of 

 the clumsiness nor the prodigious beak of the Dodo, while the head 

 was rather flat than elevated at the top. The largest males 

 weighed from 40 to 50 lbs. and must have stood fully 2 feet 9 

 inches high ; the females were shorter by at least six inches. The 

 general colour of the former was brownish -grey, darker on the 

 back ; while the latter varied from 'blonde to hrunette, with the 

 swelling breast much whiter. The eyes were black, and according 

 to the anonymous author of the Relation before cited the frontal 

 band was like black velvet, and black indeed it appears in Leguat's 

 figure, though he is commonly understood to say that it was of a 

 tan colour, but his language seems open to the meaning that it was 

 the bill which was of that tint. The flank feathers were thick and 

 rounded at the end like shells, but generally the plumage must have 

 been soft ("ni plumes ni polls") and it was kept extremely neat. 

 So much for the appearance of the birds, of their habits it may be 

 said that they were generally found singly or in pairs, but the 

 young, of which only one seems to have been hatched yearly, 

 accompanied its parents for some time. The nest was a heap of 

 palm-leaves, a foot and a half high, and therein a single egg was 

 laid, both parents incubating it in turn. The male birds were very 

 pugnacious, and the number of bones that had been broken and 

 united during life contained in the collections brought to this 

 country is very considerable, shewing the eff"ects of the cestus-Y\ke 

 armature of the wing. The quarrels were no doubt between rival 

 birds, and they indulged in curious gesticulations, whirling round 

 20 or 30 times in succession, during which time they made 

 a loud noise with their wings. It would seem too that between 

 the time of Leguat and that of the later observers the birds had 

 learnt to resent injurious treatment by biting. 



^ The hyoids, the tip of the wing and the tail are, I think, the only exceptions. 



^ Leguat's figures are neither works of art nor of authority, and no doubt 

 contributed to the ill repute under which he so long laboured. His marvellous 

 ^^ Giant" is obviously taken from an engraving by Francis Barlow (c/. Rowley, 

 Orn. Miscell. ii. p. 132), which is itself but a poor copy of one by Adrian Collaert 

 {Proc. Zool. Soc. 1875, p. 194). Schlegel's restoration of the Solitaire {Album 

 der Nahmr, 1854, Aflev. ii. p. 344) is vitiated by his mistaken belief in the 

 Struthious affinity of the Dididse. Still it is tlie work of an artist and an orni- 

 thologist, which is more than can be said of one (produced, I believe, in France 

 but by Avhom I know not) that has of late years obtained a popular circulation, 

 as often happens with inferior work, and must be at least as wide of the mark as 

 Leguat's, 



