SUPPOSED NEW SPECIES OF NECROPSAR. 35 
primaries) have very short acuminate tips. The wing reaches to within 54 
mm.—a distance greater than the length of the metatarsus—of the tip of 
the tail. 
The powerful metatarsus, over the top of which the feathering just comes, 
is scutellated in front, has the plantar aspect entire, and is 31°5 mm. in length. 
It has 8 scutes in front, the first, a very small one, emerging from below the 
feathers; the second small, but larger than the first, and followed by three 
others more elongated, the central one of which is 6 mm. long; the division 
between the fourth and fifth scutes runs obliquely downwards and inwards. 
The toes are strong; the hind toe has a longer and stronger claw than that 
of the mid toe, and measures 23 mm. with the claw, and 16 mm. without 
it ; the middle toe with its claw is 31 mm, and 24 without it. 
The tail, consisting of twelve rectrices, is 98 mm. long, and is in this 
specimen graduated ; but as the bird was killed during moult, and the outer 
feathers may not have yet fully grown, it is impossible to say definitely 
whether it was really graduated or not. The probability is, however, in 
favour of a square tail, for the two central and the two outer feathers had 
recently been renewed ; but the two intermediate ones still belong to the old 
plumage, and though the tips are broken off, they would seem to have been 
of equal length with the central ones. Total length of the specimen is 
225 mm. 
Necropsar lequati, which is probably unique, bore the number 1792 in 
Lord Derby’s Museum, and, as above stated, was obtained, according to 
M Verreaux’ label, in Madagascar. It is not improbable, however, that it 
is the last and only specimen of the species referred to in the Felation de 
I'Lle Rodrigue, which, unknown on the mainland, was confined to the Je au 
Mat, to the “south of the main island,” where it was living about a hundred 
and sixty years ago (1730). In that case, I feel inclined to regard Necropsar 
rodericanus as the Fregilupus of Rodriguez, and N. leguati as the true egg- 
eating starling of the lle au Mat. 
Looking at our bird, it is difficult to credit it with the habits, ascribed to 
it by the author of the Relation, of even occasionally varying its diet with 
“ turtles dead of hunger which they well know how to tear out of their shells; ” 
while their feeding principally and habitually on, as he states, the ‘“‘ eggs of 
fishing birds,” although apparently incongruous diet for a starling, may be a 
habit acquired on this small, quite flat islet, ‘without water, and almost wholly 
composed of limestone.” There, likely enough, seeds and insects were scarce, 
as vegetable food would appear to have been, seeing that the turtles died of 
hunger, according to the narrative of this nameless but observant French 
surveyor, who could little have dreamt that his white bird, that made a 
“wonderful warbling,” would remain a mystery to ornithologists for a 
century and-a half, and that finally the solitary representative of it would be 
re-discovered in a provincial museum in England. 
Note on Two Species of Pigeon. 
Hemiphaga spadicea (Lath.).—The process of cataloguing the Pigeons 
in the Museum has brought to light three specimens of Hemiphaga spadicea, a 
species believed to be now extinct, and so rare in collections, that the follow- 
ing observations may be of interest to ornithologists. 
The known specimens of this bird are distributed in three Museums, so far 
as we can learn: one is in the British Museum, one in the Senckenbergian 
collection, Frankfort, and one (or perhaps more) is apparently in the Phila- 
delphia Academy of Sciences (Cassin, U.S. Expl. Exp. Birds, p. 225, 1858). 
