EXTERMINATION 217 
and gone. Of this not a relic has been handled by any naturalist. 
The latest description of it, by Du Bois,! is meagre in the extreme, 
and though two figures—one by Bontekoe (circa 1646) and another 
by Pierre Witthoos (0). 1693) have been thought to represent it 
(Trans. Zool. Soc. vi. p. 373, pl. 62), their identification is but 
conjectural. Yet the existence of such a bird is indubitable. 
Far to the eastward of these two sister islands lies a third 
—Rodriguez. Here there formerly lived another Didine bird, 
sufficiently distinct from the Dodo of Mauritius to form a genus of 
its own— Pezophaps solitarius, the SOLITAIRE of Leguat, a Huguenot 
exile who, passing some time in 1691-93 on that island, has left, 
with a very inferior figure, a charmingly naive account of its 
appearance and habits, the general truth of which has been amply 
substantiated by Sir Edward Newton’s discovery in large numbers 
of its bones (Phil. Trans. 1869, p. 327). These have since been 
supplemented by those collected by Mr. H. H. Slater in 1874 (op. cit. 
vol. 168, p. 438), and now nearly complete specimens may be seen 
in several of the principal Museums of this country, the most 
perfect being one of each sex in that of the University of Cam- 
bridge. 
Nor does this group of Didine birds contain all the lost forms 
of the Mascarene islands. From Mauritius have disappeared at 
least two species of Parrot, a Dove,” a large Coot, and a second 
Ralline bird, abnormal, flightless, and long-billed —Aphanapterys. 
A painting of this last was found by Von Frauenfeld in the 
emperor's library at Vienna, and some of its bones rescued by Sir 
Edward Newton from the peat of the Mare aux Songes, have been 
fully described by Prof. A. Milne-Edwards. Remains of the Coot 
and one of the extinct Parrots were found also in the same spot, 
while skins of the other Parrot and of the Dove still exist in a few 
museums. Réunion, also, once had other birds now lost, and so 
had Rodriguez. In the former, a somewhat abnormal STARLING, 
Fregilupus, existed until some forty years ago, and its skin and 
skeleton are among the treasures of three or four museums.® 
this last statement allowance may perhaps be made for some exaggeration, but 
a Monkey, the Macacus pileatus, still inhabits Mauritius, and though I know no 
record of its introduction, introduced it must have been from Ceylon, to which 
island the species is peculiar. We may be certain that there were no Monkeys 
in Mauritius or any of the Mascarene Islands at the time of their discovery. 
1 Les Voyages faits par le Sieur D. B. aux Isles Dauphine ou Madagascar, & 
Bourbon, ou Mascarenne, és années 1669.70. 71. & 72. p. 170. (Paris: 1674.) 
2 Alectorenas nitidissima. For a notice of the specimen in the Museum of 
Science and Art in Edinburgh, and the only one known to exist in the United 
Kingdom, see Proc. Zool. Soc. 1879, pp. 2-4. 
3 The only known skeleton is in the Museum of the University of Cambridge, 
and has been minutely described by Dr. Murie (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1874, pp. 474- 
488). In 1889 the British Museum obtained, at the dispersal of the Riocour 
