248 PHCENICOPTERID^. 



traced to Cape Colony, and to Ceylon. There is great 

 difference in the dimensions of individual birds, as well as 

 in the degrees of the rosy tints with which their plumage is 

 suffused ; and to these circumstances are, perhaps, attribut- 

 able the separation of the allied forms Ph. erythrc^us, 

 Ph. minor, and Ph. ruhidus. In North America the re- 

 presentative species is the very distinct Ph. ruber; in 

 South America it is Ph. ignijMlliatus ; and on the lofty 

 plateaux of the Andes is found the remarkable Ph. andiniis, 

 in which the hind toe is absent, for which reason the species 

 has been placed by Bonaparte in a different genus. Fossil 

 remains of a Flamingo have been found in the Lower Middle 

 Tertiary formations in France ; and several extinct genera 

 from the lacustrine deposits of the Miocene period have been 

 referred to this family. 



The earliest account of the nest of the Flamingo appears 

 to be that which is given by Dampier in his ' Voyages,' 

 Vol. I. pp. 70, 71. On his visit to Sal, one of the smaller 

 of the Cape Verd Islands, in September 1683, he saw the 

 old nests in the form of hillocks, and the young hatched 

 that year, as well as the adults, and so far his descrij)tions 

 of them are tolerably accurate. He goes on to say that the 

 birds, when incubating, stand with their legs in the water, 

 " resting themselves against the Hillock, and covering the 

 hollow Nest upon it with their Eumps ; for their Legs are very 

 long ; and building thus as they do upon the Ground they 

 could neither draw their Legs conveniently into their Nests, 

 nor sit down upon them otherwise than by resting their whole 

 Bodies there, to the Prejudice of their Eggs or their Young, 

 were it not for this admirable Contrivance which they have 

 by natural Instinct." In this he is obviously speaking 

 upon hearsay evidence, probably derived from the Governor 

 and the five or six men w^ho were the only inhabitants of 

 that island, for in September no birds would have been 

 sitting on their eggs, and Dampier expressly says that he 

 never saw the nests or young of the Flamingo in any other 

 part of the world. His statement has, however, been 

 generally, if not universally, accepted, for want of a better, 



