CRO WNED P1GE ONS TO THED-PIGE ONSD OD OS. 



245 



(T. turtur\ and the cream-coloured turtle-dove (T. risorius) so often kept in 

 cages, are the best-known examples. The sub- family Calcenadince is repre- 

 sented by the single genus Catenas, the Nicobar pigeons, as they are called, 

 remarkable for their metallic plumage and the long hackles on the neck, like 

 those of a fowl. The crowned pigeons (Goura) which are only found in the 

 Papuan Islands, are remarkable for their beautiful crests of diffused plumes. 

 Six species are known, all of them inhabiting different areas of the great 

 island of New Guinea, or the islands immediately adjacent to it. 



This interesting form of pigeon, repre- 

 sented by a single genus only, Didun- 

 culus, is an inhabitant 

 of Samoa or the Navi- The Tooth- 

 gator's Islands. It has Billed Pigeons. 

 a large hooked bill, Family 



which has also some Didtmculidce. 

 notches or toothed ser- 

 rations near the tip of the lower man- 

 dible. It is remarkable for the similar- 

 ity of its form to that of the dodo, 

 though, of course, it is on a much 

 smaller scale. Hence the name Didun- 

 culus, or little dodo, of which the single 

 species, D. strigirostris, was, a short time 

 ago, threatened with the same extinc- 

 tion as that which has overtaken its larger 

 relative. The dodo, not having wings 

 capable of flight, was unable to save 

 itself when danger threatened ; but the 

 Didunculus, though a ground-bird, and 

 formerly nesting on the ground, so that 

 it was fast diminishing in numbers, 

 owing to the attacks of wild cats, appears suddenly to have resumed its 

 arboreal habits, and now both roosts and nests in trees, so that of late years 

 its numbers have greatly increased. 



The sub-order, Didi, consists of two genera, Pezophaps and Didus, both 

 now extinct, but living on the earth less than three hundred years ago. 

 The solitaire (Pezophaps solitarius) inhabited the island of Rodriguez, and 

 was about the size of a turkey. The old traveller, Leguat, has given a 

 description of the bird as follows: "They never fly; their wings are too 

 little to support the weight of the bodies ; they serve only to beat themselves 

 and flutter when they call one another. They will whirl about for twenty or 

 thirty times together on the same side during the space of four or five 

 minutes. The motion of their wings makes a noise very like that of a 

 rattle, and one may hear it two hundred paces off. The bone of their wing 

 grows greater towards the extremity, and forms a little round mass under 

 the feathers as big as a musket ball. That and its beak are the chief defence 

 of this bird. Some of the males weigh forty-five pounds. The females are 

 wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown ; I call them fair, because they 

 are of the colour of fair hair. They have a sort of peak, like a widow's, upon 

 their breasts (lege beaks), which is of dun colour. No one feather is 

 straggling from the other all over their bodies, they being very careful to 

 adiust themselves, and make them all even with their beaks. The feathers 



Fig. 13. THE CROWNED PIGEON (Goura 

 coronata). 



