" Mauritius Hen " of Peter Mundy. 319 



of Persia, and Avho visited Mauritius on his return journey. 

 In his Avork " A relation of some yeares travaile, begunne 

 Anno 1626, etc. etc./' published in London in 1631', on 

 p. 214 is a little picture of "A Dodo, A Hen and A Cacato/' 

 but nothing further is said of the bird. Pieter.van den 

 Broecke, a Dutch traveller, also figured the bird but gave no 

 description. On this figure Schlegel founded the specific 

 name. 



A Frenchman, Fran9ois Cauche of Rouen, who made 

 a journey to Madagascar in 1638, gives the following account 

 (taken from an English translation of his travels published 

 in 1710) : — " In Prince Maurice's Island .... as also Red 

 Hens with Woodcock's beakes to take the which they need 

 only to show them a piece of red cloth and they will follow 

 and suffer themselves to be taken by hand. They are as big 

 as our hens and excellent eating/' 



In 1868 Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld published a re- 

 production of two pictures on vellum of the Dodo and of 

 the Red Hen. These and other pictures of ornithological 

 subjects were found in the private cabinet of the Emperor 

 of Austria, and were supposed to have been painted for the 

 Emperor Francis I. by the Dutch artist Hoefnagel about 

 1626. This picture agrees very well with Mundy's descrip- 

 tion and figure, though the neck is rather longer and more 

 slender. 



Some bones obtained from the " Mare aux Songes " in 

 Mauritius about 1868 by Mr. George Clark were examined 

 and described by Milue-Edwards (Ann. Sci. Nat. (5) x. 1868, 

 p. 325). He identified these with the " Mauritius Hen " 

 and placed the bird among the Rails near Ocydromus, under 

 the name of Ajihanapteryx broekii (Schl.). He also gives a 

 very complete account of all that was known about the bird 

 from contemporary travellers and writers. 



A further collection of bones from the same locality made 

 by Mr. Theodore Sauzier in 1889 enabled Sir Edward 

 Newton and Dr. Gadow (Trans. Zool. Soc. xiii. 1893, p. 281, 

 pis. xxxiii.-xxxvii.) to add to our knowledge of the osteology 

 of this interesting extinct Rail. 



