Vv DIDUNCULIDAE Boi 
that it still existed in inaccessible districts; while it is also 
mentioned in an anonymous manuscript discovered at Paris, 
written perhaps about 1729. Remains came into the hands of 
Desjardins in 1789 (not fully recognised until 1852), and others 
were forwarded to England; but much the most important finds 
were those of the late Sir Edward Newton in 1864, followed up 
by Mr. Jenner in the succeeding years, and of Mr. H. H. Slater 
in 1874. In 1875 two complete skeletons were obtained, and 
fairly perfect specimens of those of each sex are at Cambridge, 
with others elsewhere. 
This Solitaire was larger than a Swan, the male standing about 
2 feet 9 inches, and the female 2 feet 3 inches high; the colour 
of the former was brownish-grey, but the latter varied from the 
hue of “fair hair” to brown, and had a whitish breast. The 
shehtly-hooked, elongated beak had a feathered ridge or peak at 
the base of the culmen, the neck was elongated and straight, the 
legs were longer and weaker than in the Dodo, the wings were 
rudimentary, the hind part (pelvis) was rounded, the tail was 
hardly noticeable, and the thigh-feathers were thick, and curved 
“like shells” at the end. A spherical mass of bone, “as big as 
a musket-ball,” was developed on the wings of the males; and 
they used it, in addition to the beak, as a weapon of offence, while 
they whirled themselves about twenty or thirty times in four 
or five minutes, making a noise with their pinions like a rattle. 
The mien was fine and the walk stately, the birds being seen 
singly or in pairs; the nest was a heap of palm-leaves a foot or 
more high, the single large egg was incubated by both parents. 
The food is said to have consisted of seeds and leaves, and a 
stone as big as a hen’s egg was often found in the stomach. 
Fam. XI. Didunculidae.—Didunculus strigirostris, the Manu- 
mea or Red Bird of the islands of Upolu, Savai, and Tutuila in 
the Samoan group, is glossy greenish-black, with chestnut back, 
rump, wing-coverts, tail and under tail-coverts, but browner wing- 
quills and abdomen. The hooked and toothed bill is orange, the 
feet are reddish, and the naked orbits red. The sexes are similar, 
the young entirely brown. First made known by Strickland on 
the strength of its discovery in the autumn of 1839 by Peale 
1 Phil. Trans. clix. 1869, pp. 327-362; clxviii. 1879, pp. 448-451. Further 
details will be found in Strickland and Melville’s work The Dodo and its Kindred. 
London, 1848, pp. 46-56; A. Newton, Dict. Birds, 1896, pp. 887-892. 
