Mr. A. Newton on some Bones of Didus. 61 



largely tipped with white ; upper surface of the wings grey, their 

 under surface white ; bill leaden grey, darkest at the tip ; feet 

 blackish brown. 



Total length 6| inches ; bill f ; wing 4-f ; tail, 3 ; tarsi f . 



Hah. Central Australia. 



Remark. — This large and fine species is unlike every other known 

 member of the genus. It is most nearly allied to A. albiventris, but 

 differs from that bird in the jet-black colouring of its under tail- 

 coverts, and from A. cinereus in its smaller size and the greater 

 extent of the black on the face. The specimen from which the 

 above description was taken has been kindly sent to me by Mr. S. 

 White, of the Reed-beds, near Adelaide, South Australia, who 

 informs me that it was shot by him at St. Becket's Pool, lat. 

 28° 30', on the 23rd of August, 1863, and who in the note accom- 

 panying it says, " I have never seen this bird south. It collects at 

 night, like A. sordidns, and utters the same kind of call. It seems 

 to be plentiful all over the north country. I saw it at St. Becket's 

 Pool, feeding on the ground, soaring high in the air, and clinging in 

 bushes, like the others. The two sexes appeared to be very similar 

 in outward appearance. The stomachs of those examined were 

 fleshy, and contained the remains of small Coleoptera. 



On some recently discovered Bones of the largest 

 known Species of Dodo (Didus nazarenus, Bartlett). 

 By Alfred Newton, M.A., F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



The three bones which I now have the pleasure of exhibiting 

 have been recently received by me from my brother Mr. Edward 

 Newton, a Corresponding Member of this Society, who himself found 

 two of them in a cave on the south-west side of the island of Ro- 

 driguez, which he visited on the 2nd of November last. The third 

 was obtained on the same island, about the same time, by Captain 

 Barkly, a son and aide-de-camp of the Governor of Mauritius. All 

 three belong, without doubt, to the largest known species of Dodo, 

 to which Mr. Bartlett (P. Z. S. 185 1, p. 284) applied the name Didus 

 nazarenus, and which was so unaccountably overlooked by Messrs. 

 Strickland and Melville in their excellent monograph of the curious 

 group Didince. These authors, as Mr. Bartlett showed (he. cil.), did 

 not distinguish between this very large bird and the smaller and more 

 slender " Solitaire " (Pezophaps solitaria), which, if we are to trust 

 the evidence before us, was, equally with Didus nazarenus and D. 

 ineptus, an inhabitant of Rodriguez. 



The two bones found by my brother were picked up near the en- 

 trance of a very dry cave, where little, if any, stalagmitic deposit was 

 forming, at least at the time of his visit. One is a perfect left tarso- 

 metatarsus, and the other a left humerus, wanting its extremities, as 

 is so often the case in specimens of this bone found under circum- 

 stances which lead to the belief that the bird to which it belonged 

 had been eaten by men or dogs. 



The bone found by Captain Barkly is a right femur. Though 



