646 MR. CALDWELL ON THE ZOOLOGY OF RODRIGUEZ. [Dec. 7, 
It should be remarked that the ununited skeleton has not got the 
atlas bone. It was broken and so delicate, I did not dare to mount it. 
The sternum is very complete, the outline being perfect except 
on the right side, where the lateral process is broken off, though I 
am not yet sure I have not got the fragment put aside. The furcula 
is unbroken, and very small when compared with the size of the 
bird. The head is very complete in every respect, and the cervical 
and dorsal vertebrae, on the whole remarkably well preserved, as are 
also the wing- and leg-bones: the feet are quite complete. 
A second skeleton of a male (?) bird is far from being so perfect as 
the one just deseribed, but still will make a capital specimen. One 
side of the sternum is complete, the head very nearly so; but the 
pelvis is somewhat damaged, though one of the pubic bones is in 
place. The vertebrae of the neck are not in such good order as in 
the other one. 
I do not know whether the naturalists inquired into the probable 
means of existence of the Solitaire. To one of local experience the 
merest view of the ground would suggest that they lived in the midst 
of abundance of food, and that their extinction cannot be ascribed 
to deficiency of nourishment, nor to human agency, as the popula- 
tion was too sparse, and the place where their remains are now found 
too remote to be more than occasionally hunted; and it is well 
established that it is only very lately that many of the caverns in 
which these remains have been found have been discovered. Neither 
can it be granted that the bones were washed into the caverns and 
thus buried in the floors, though doubtless such was the case in 
some instances, especially in some of those explored by Mr. Slater. 
The cave which I explored was in a sort of cliff, and the entrance 
about eight feet above the bed of the ravine, which ultimately be- 
came a cavern; and there were no marks whatever of any action of 
water beyond the filtration from the roof in a few spots. I can only 
gather therefore that these birds resorted to these caves in consider- 
able numbers and appear to have frequented them, although this 
hypothesis is opposed to Leguat’s statement, as he expressly men- 
tions that the birds were not gregarious, but solitary. 
The hypothesis that they got into the caves to avoid fires is equally 
untenable. Fire could not take place in this coral country, as there 
is no grass to propagate it, and the trees are very wide apart. 
Messrs. Newton’s theory of swine having destroyed them is equally, 
in my view, erroneous; pigs would get nothing to eat, nor water to 
drink, and would scarcely leave the ravines far away from this spot, 
where abundance of guava, raspberries, Colocasia-roots, and other 
succulent food in which they delight exist, and where they could (as 
at present) wallow in the muddy pools. 
1 can only attribute their apparently sudden and simultaneous 
disappearance to some terrible hurricane or other disturbing cause 
which led them to these places for shelter; for they are found in 
many places where no bird deprived of the faculty of flight, and 
with any instinct, would resort to, viz. withdrawn into nooks, cran- 
nies, and fissures whence they could, in many instances, scarcely get 
