ON EXTINCT BIRDS OF THE MASCARENE ISLANDS. 369 



FuLiCA Newtonii. 

 Notes from a ^'■Memoir on ayi Extinct Species of the Genus Fidica, 

 which for merit/ inhcibited the Island of 2Iaurititcs", hy AI. A. 

 Milne Edwards.^ 



The species, which M. J\Iihie-Ed wards notices in his memoir, 

 belongs to the division of water-hens and to the genns Coot 

 {Foulque), birds, rather runners and swimmers than flyers, and 

 which never wander far from Uxkes or watercourses, on the borders 

 of which they construct their nests, and easily find their food. 



(The bones which were examined seem to have belonged to 

 several individuals, and some were black and others brown, like 

 the debris of the Dodo exhumed from the deposits in the marsh 

 at Mauritius, known as the Hare au.n Songes. . . .) 



It is interesting to ascertain if the travellers who visited the 

 Mascarene Islands at the time when the Dodo still existed had 

 any knowledge of the Fidica Newtonii, Newton's Coot. The most 

 precise information which we have upon the fauna of these islands 

 has been transmitted to us by Dubois, who visited this region 

 from 1669 to 1672. 



This author, in his description of the river-birds of the island 

 of Bourbon, speaks of" Water hens, which are as large as fowls ; 

 they ai'e all black, and have a large white crest on the head." 



These characteristics do not apply to the Coot, which is met 

 with at the present day in the same localities, that is to say, the 

 Fidica cristata, for this species is not only smaller than an 

 ordinary fowl, but is remarkable for the frontal plaque, which is 

 of a deep red, whilst with the bird of which Dubois speaks, the 

 rostral plaque was entirely white. 



From an examination of the bone of the foot of Fidica 

 Newtonii, the size of the entire animal can be judged, it would be 

 very near the size of a large fowl. These indications permit the 

 supposition that the Fulica Neivtonii could well be the species 

 described by Dubois, and which, instead of being specially locaHsed 

 in Bourbon, also inhabited Mauritius. 



1 Ann. Sc. Nat., 5 Ser. Zool., viii, pp. 194-220. 



B B 



