64 The Dodo and its Kindred. 



ball of bone at the end of the wing. They are difficult to catch 

 in the woods, bat are easily run down in open places. 



From March to September they are fat and delicate,- especially 

 when young. Some of the males weigh forty-five pounds. 



The females are very beautiful, and are careful to adjust their 

 feathers with great exactness : those on their thighs are round 

 like shells, and being very thick have an agreeable effect. They 

 walk with so much stateliness and grace as to excite a degree of 

 admiration which often saves their lives. 



" Though these birds will sometimes very familiarly come up 

 near to one when we do not run after them, yet they will never 

 grow tame. As soon as they are caught they shed tears without 

 crying, and refuse all manner of sustenance till they die." 



M. Leguat contends with easy credulity, that the stone always 

 found in their gizzards was there when they were hatched, be- 

 cause, as he says, the passage from the craw to the gizzard is too 

 small to admit a stone of half the size. He says it is flat on one 

 side and round on the other, and so hard that they found them 

 excellent whetstones. Their nests are made of palm leaves and 

 are eighteen inches high. They lay only one egg, which is 

 larger than that of a goose, and the incubation is shared both by 

 the male and female during their term of seven weeks, during all 

 which period and for several months while their young are unable 

 to provide for themselves, they repel every bird of their own spe- 

 cies to a distance of 200 yards, the male bird repelling the males, 

 and the female the females — the male calling her for this purpose 

 when away, by making a noise with his wings. After raising 

 the young bird, the parents are generally seen together and re- 

 main associated. M. Leguat relates, with some doubt whether 



he shall be believed, that a companion is brought to the young 

 Solitaire, by a company of thirty or forty birds, some days after 

 it leaves the nest, and the parent birds march with the band to 

 some bye place, where they are left alone. 



From the figure given by Leguat, the Solitaire must have been 

 a bird of noble mien — stately like the wild turkey, but taller 

 than that bird. 



The dates of the plantane, a sort of palm tree, were among 

 their articles of food. 



Rodriguez is inhabited by a few colonists under the authority 

 of England, but they state that no such bird is known to them ; 

 and Edward Higgin, Esq., of Liverpool, who was shipwrecked 

 and remained two months on this island, avers the same, while 

 he bears full testimony to the general accuracy of Leguat's book. 



Although we cannot look for any living specimens of the Soli- 

 taire, we may expect that their skeletons will be found in the 

 caverns and diluvium of Rodriguez. The legs and neck were 

 longer, the beak shorter, and the wings, although useless for 



