656 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1«93. 



The common pigeon is anotlier bird which nses its wings with good 

 efi'ect, and althongh the dove is lield np as the type of gentleness, there 

 are few birds of more quarrelsome disposition, and more given to pick- 

 ing upon their weaker neighbors. The company manners of thepigeon 

 are unobjectionable, and the members of a flock will tly irnd feed abroad 

 in harmony, but, once within the shelter of their own loft, woe betide 

 the bird which dares put foot on his neighbor's territory, for he will be 

 set uj)on and cuffed without mercy. 



The pigeon, too, is a skilled boxer, feinting and guarding with one 

 wing and striking with the other, the blow being delivered by the wing 

 farthest from his opponent, the intention being that the wrist, which 

 is the most effective part of the wing for striking a blow, shall strike 

 the adversary about the head. While this mode of combat is not 

 peculiar to pigeons, it is eminently characteristic of the group, so that 

 they may be called pugnacious in the strictest sense of the term; the 

 Latin verb j>«y/ho meaning sjiecially to tight with blows of the fist, or, 

 as we say, to come to fisticuffs. 



Pigeons, according to our ideas, do not fight quite fairly, and if they 

 have no positive spur upon their wings, they certainly come very near 

 it. If one will carefully part the feathers on the outer edge of a 

 pigeon's wing near the bend, commonly called shoulder, but really the 

 wrist, he will find a small bare spot and a blunt, well-marked promi- 

 nence, often covered with integument so thick and hard that it can 

 almost be called horn. In some wild pigeons this tubercle or boss is 

 well developed, especially in the curious Samoan DidunciiJns, while at 

 least one extinct species was provided with a sort of natural slung- 

 shot that must have added not a little to the effectiveness of a blow. 

 This bird was the fat and flightless Solitaire, of Rodriguez, a near 

 relative of the dodo, and, like it, a great, ungainly, aberrant member 

 of the pigeon family, taller than a turkey. 



All that we know about the Solitaire has been gathered from the 

 journal of Francois Leguat, who tells us that, while the birds were 

 nesting, they would not sufl'er any other bird of the same species to 

 approach within 200 yards of the jilace. He writes — 



But what is singular the male will uever drive away the females, only when he 

 perceives one he makes a noise with his wings to call the female, and she drives the 

 unwelcome stranger away, not leaving it till it is without her bounds. The female 

 does the same to the males and he drives them away. The combats between them 

 on this occasion last sometimrs pretty long, because the stranger only turns about 

 and does not tly directly from the nest. 



Leguat says, furthermore, that ''the bone of their wing grows greater 

 toward the extremity and forms a little round mass under the feathers 

 as big as a musket ball. That and its beak are the chief defense of 

 this bird." 



"As big as a musket ball " very aptly describes the swollen bone at the 

 base of the metacarpus (fig. 1), and this, swung by the short, stout little 



