Oil the Ancient Fatuia of the Mascaretie Islands. 129 



XV. — Observations on the Ancient Fauna of the Mascarene 

 Islands. By M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards*. 



Among the bones collected in the Island of Mauritius, in the 

 Mare aux Songes, side by side with the remains of the dodo 

 and of the gigantic coot, which I have already had the 

 honour of mentioning to the Academy, I noticed a lower jaw 

 which appeared to me to be derived from a bird entirely un- 

 known at the present day, and belonging to the group of the 

 Grallaj, together with some parts of the foot indicating the 

 former existence of a new generic type allied to Ocydromus. 

 I inclined to believe that all these bones belonged to the same 

 extinct species ; but 1 hesitated about pronouncing an opinion 

 upon this subject, when some facts of another kind lately 

 ascertained at Vienna by M. von Frauenfeld removed all my 

 doubts, and enabled me to arrive at more complete results. 



In the collection of paintings upon vellum made chiefly 

 in the reign of Rodolph II. by Hoefnagel, a Dutch artist, 

 and which now belongs to the private library of the Emperor 

 of Austria, that naturalist found two coloured drawings, repro- 

 ductions of which he hastened to publish. One of these pic- 

 tures represents the dodo, the other a very remarkable bird, 

 which in its aspect somewhat resembles the Apteryx^ and 

 which appears to be the species mentioned by F. Gauche, 

 under the name of the Poule rouge au hec de Becasse, as living 

 in the Island of Mauritius at the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century. In the memoir which accompanies these plates, M. 

 von Frauenfeld has endeavoured to settle the place which this 

 bird should occupy in our zoological classification ; but the 

 characters displayed by the figure which he had before him 

 could not enable him to arrive at a complete solution of this 

 question, and he was obliged to confine himself to indicating 

 the features of resemblance of the Poule rouge au bee de 

 Becasse on the one hand to the Gallinacese, on another to the 

 Kails, and in the third place to the Apteryx] finally, he 

 gives it the generic name of Ajphanapteryx — a designation 

 which seems to indicate that it is with the last that he found 

 the greatest analogy. 



I easily convinced myself that the bones of which I have 

 just spoken as having been found in the Mauritius, and the 

 examination of which had been kindly intrusted to me by 

 MM. Newton, all belonged to the Aphanapteryx ; and the 

 anatomical peculiarities presented by these fossils enable me 



* Translated by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S., from the * Couiptes Rendus/ 

 April 12, 1869, tome Ixviii. pp. 856-859. 



