ox EXTINCT BIRDS OF THE MASCARENE ISLANDS. oGo 



genus is most allied to Eallus.^ The genus Poriihyrio, though 

 zoologically and geographically very natural and so very conspicuous 

 by the more or less fine blue colour of the feathers, differs, really, 

 from GaUimda in no respect than in the higher bill and oval 

 nostrils, whilst these in GaUinula are more elongated. Since, 

 then, the figure of our bird shows elongated nostrils, and also a 

 bill (so far as one can determine its form in the plate, where it is 

 represented as seen from above) whicli seems to have been less 

 high than in rorphyrio, and finally, since its colour is very 

 different from that of Porphyrio, we must accordingly range it 

 under the genus GaUinula. 



" We will now examine how far the exact proportion of the 

 various parts of our bird is observed in Leguat's figure. Since 

 even in our own day, except Wolf, artists can hardly be found 

 who are without failings in this respect, so can we much less 

 expect that the contrary has been the case at the time Leguat 

 lived, and with a mo'c amateur" — especially, too, as his figure 

 represents the object in such a remarkable reduction as one 

 twenty fifth. We have already remarked, in our treatise on the 

 Dodos,^ that in the existing rude drawing of that bird from 

 ISfanritius, in Van Neck's Voyage, it is much more naturally and 

 truthfully delineated than in the figures of all European artists 

 up to this time, by whom the poor Dodo has been transformed 

 into a real monster, and wherein the hind-toe of the foot in the 

 foreground is always wrongly attached, and stands in a crooked 

 direction. 



''Now although the habitus of the Geant in Leguat's figure is 

 very well drawn, although the attitude of the feet, especially of 

 the toes (notwithstanding the representation in pei'spective), 

 in this plate betrays much more study from nature and more 

 attention than the painters of the Dodo liked to give, yet the 



1 Cf. Ibis, 1865, p. 533. (Dr. Sclater.) 



2 Professor Newton has remarked on the origin of Leguat's repre- 

 sentation of the Geant being derived from the print of Avis Indica in 

 A. Collaert's Avium vivie Icones, 1590 {Pro. Zool. Soc., 1873), repro- 

 duced in facsimile at p. 210. 



3 Versel en Mcdadccl. Konink. Akad. Amsterdam, 1854, pp. 232-256, 



