SNO W-BIRD—SOLITAIRE 887 
and Australia. In all of these it appears that the female is larger 
and more brilliantly coloured than the male, and in the last two 
species she is further dis- 
tinguished by what in most 
birds is emphatically a mas- 
culine property, though its 
use is here unknown,— 
namely a complex TRACHEA, 
while the male has that organ simple. He is also believed to 
undertake the duty of incubation. 
BILu oF ParntTep Snipe. (After Swainson.) 
SNOW-BIRD, a name variously applied in different parts of the 
world, but perhaps originally to the Snow-buntTiNG, Plectrophanes 
nivalis, Which is also known as SNOW-FINCH (through that name 
being by some writers assigned to Montifringilla nivalis of the Alps, 
which is often mistaken for it) and SNOW-FLAKE. SNOW- 
COCK is an Anglo-Indian name for Tetraogallus himalayensis, 
which others call SNOW-PARTRIDGE or SNOW-PHEASANT, 
but the last is restricted by some to the birds of the beautiful genus 
Crossoptilum. 
SOLAN-GOOSE (Icel. Sula, Gael. Stdaire), often spelt SOLAND, 
a very common name for the GANNET. The supposition that the 
bird takes its name from the channel known as the Solent has 
nothing to justify it. 
SOLDIER-BIRD, a name in Australia for Myzomela sanguinoleuta, 
also called BLooD-BIRD (p. 44), one of the Meliphagide (HONEY- 
EATER, p. 428). 
SOLITAIRE,! the name used by the French colonists for the 
Didine bird of Bourbon (EXTERMINATION, p. 217), as we learn 
from Du Bois (Voyages faits par le Sieur D. B. Paris: 1674, p. 170) 
and Carré (Voyages dans les Indes Orientales, Paris: 1699, i. p. 12) 
who were there in 1668 and the following years. In 1691 Leguat 
arrived in Rodriguez, where he resided more than two years, and 
in the narrative of his adventures he applied the same name to the 
Didine bird he found there, of which he is the first known to have 
given an account.2 This was rescued from obscurity by Buffon’s 
1 According to Littré the first application of the word to a’ Bird is in the 
Psalter (Ps. 101, 8, or 102, 7 of the Anglican version), the species there men- 
tioned having been long identified with the Blue Rock-Turusu, MJonticola 
cyanus. The name is also used in Jamaica (Gosse, B, Jai. p. 200) for Myiadectes 
solitarius, possibly one of the Ampelidx, and has been carried on by Dr. Sharpe 
(Cat. B. Br. Mus. vi. pp. 370-377) to other species of the genus. 
2 T cannot but suspect there was some other, from what is said of a land-bird 
that could not fly by the author of The Isle of Pines, a fictitious work ascribed by 
Wood (Athen. Oxon. 918 ; cf. Rigg, Dict. Nat. Biogr. xl. pp. 259, 260) to Henry 
Nevile, of which two editions appeared in 1668. Herbert (A Lelation of some 
