1873.] LETTER FROM DR. JOHN KIRK. 195 



(ii. p. 72), of the bird he calls the ' Geant.' On comparison it was 

 obvious that one figure must have been copied from the other : the 

 only question was, which was the original ? This I was soon able to 

 decide. The print bears at bottom the words ' Adr. Collaert fecit ' 

 and 'Th. Galle excud.' Now, referring in the British Museum to 

 a copy of Collaert' s 'Avium vivae Icones,' I found my possession to 

 be a detached leaf from that work, which is commonly supposed to 

 have been published at Antwerp about the year 1 580 ; while Leguat's 

 first edition appeared in 1708, he having only seen the bird in 1694. 

 In Nagler's ' Kunst-Lexicon ' (iii. p. 45) it is stated that Adrian 

 Collaert was born in 1520, and died in 1567. Th. Galle is said by 

 the same authority (iv. p. 566) to have been born in 1560. The 

 print in the British Museum copy (436. b. 24) differs from my own 

 in that the lettering runs ' Adr. Collaert excud.,' no mention being 

 made of Galle. The full title of the work seems to be 'Avium 

 vivse icones, in ses incisse & editse ab Adriano Collardo,' without date 

 or place of publication ; and the Museum copy bears besides the manu- 

 script title 'Octavius Pisani recensuit.' It follows, therefore, that 

 the figure given by Leguat is not original. 



" But there is another matter worthy of remark. Collaert's print 

 contains a second and, in some respects, a more satisfactory figure of 

 the same bird, from which its Ralline affinities are made pretty plain. 

 Now it will be recollected that in 1857 Prof. Schlegel contributed to 

 the Academy of Sciences at Amsterdam a paper on the • Geant ' 

 and other extinct birds of the Mascarene Islands *, of which paper 

 an English translation has appeared f. Herein he declared his 

 opinion that this bird must have been a huge Water-hen, and called 

 it Gallinula (Leguatia) gigantea. I need only say that, so far, I 

 quite agree with him ; indeed, if he had already seen this second 

 figure of Collaert's, he could not better have interpreted the charac- 

 ters of the ruder drawing. 



"I ought to say that the authority of Leguat's print of the 

 ' Solitaire ' (Pezophaps solitaria), so well known from Strickland's 

 reproduction of it, is not necessarily impaired by the discovery that 

 the portrait of the 'Geant' has been taken from the'Auis Indica;' 

 and I may also remark that though the proportion observable between 

 this last and two of the other figures (called ' Turma anser,' and 

 obviously of the species now known as (Edemia perspicillata) in the 

 print confirms Prof. Schlegel' s estimate of the size of the extinct 

 giant, yet too much reliance must not be placed on that fact, since, 

 on examining the rest of Collaert's work, I find that the relative 

 proportion of the figures in his prints is frequently disregarded." 



The Secretary read some extracts from a letter addressed to him by 

 Dr. John Kirk, C.M.Z.S., H.M. Consul at Zanzibar. Dr. Kirk stated 

 that he had a living female Koodoo (Tragelaphus strepsicerosl) 

 from the Brava coast, which was much smaller than the South- 

 African species, and which he suspected would prove to be different. 



* Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen. 

 Afdeeling Natmirkundc, vii. p. 110. 



t Ibis, 1866, p. 146. 



13* 



