160 Royal Society :— 
Encouraged by his former success, that one of the authors of the 
present paper who had before been to Rodriguez urged Mr. George 
Jenner, the magistrate of the island, to make a more thorough search 
in its caves ; andin 1865 this gentleman sent no less than exghty-one 
specimens to Mauritius. These were forthwith transmitted to Lon- 
don, and exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society in that 
year, when it appeared that the notion previously entertained of 
there having been two species of Pezophaps was erroneous, and 
that probably the difference in size of the specimens was sexual. 
News of this last discovery reached England during the meeting 
of the British Association at Birmingham, and, prompted by Mr. 
P. L. Sclater, that body made a liberal grant to aid further re- 
searches. Owing to several causes, the scarcity of labourers in 
Rodriguez being the chief, nearly a year elapsed before these could 
be begun. But in 1866, some coolies having been expressly sent 
thither to dig in the caves, a very large collection of the bones of 
this bird, amounting to nearly two thousand specimens, was obtained. 
These specimens include almost all the most important parts of the 
skeleton, and furnish the authors with the material for the present 
aper. 
* This vast series of specimens shows that there was a very great 
amount of individual variability in the bird, so much so as to render 
the task of describing them minutely, and yet generally, a very diffi- 
cult one. Yet, in consequence of this wealth of material, the authors 
have greater confidence in the opinions they declare. Professor 
Owen, having lately published a very detailed account of the osteo- 
logy of the Dodo*, the present paper follows as closely as possible 
the mode of treatment he therein adopted, the authors thinking that 
they are so consulting the convenience of those who may wish to 
compare the structure of the two allied birds. Thanks to him, 
also, they have been able themselves to examine the very specimens 
which he described; and they are further indebted to many others 
—Mr. George Clark of Mauritius, Professors Reinhardt, Fritsch, 
and Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Sir William Jardine, and Mr. Flower, 
for valuable assistance in the shape of models or other additional 
material. To Mr. J. W. Clark they also mention their obligations 
for reconstructing from specimens in their possession the skeletons 
of the Dodo and of two Solitaires now exhibited. 
The description of the latter follows in much detail, the amount 
of individual variability to which each bone was subject being spe- 
cially dwelt on, and the whole compared bone by bone with that of 
the Dodo and also of Didunculus. Pezophaps differs from Didun- 
culus quite as much as Didus does, but it is nearly allied to the 
latter. Still there are important differences. The neck was much 
longer than in Didus, and the vertebre, on the whole, larger. The 
ribs also possess perhaps somewhat thicker heads and articular tu- 
bercles. The pelvis is much more rounded, and approaches that of 
* “On the Osteology of the Dodo (Didus ineptus, Linn.),” Trans. Zool. Soc. 
vol. vi. pp. 49-85. 
