Ibjy.J i'RUl'. NiiWTON ON ALKCTOIUENAS NITI DISljl MA. .i 



fiite tlie imiiierous 6ctioiis that have been heajied upon the oulv 

 available facts. Tlie bird was sufficiently well described and tij^urerl 

 by Sonuerat in his ' Voyage aux Indes orientales ' (ii. p. 1 75, pi. 1 1 ) 

 as coming from the lie de France, and was named by him the Piijeon 

 hollandais — a name given, I suspect, not so much from the former 

 inhabitants of the island, as from its plumage exhibiting the colours 

 of the Dutch flag (red, blue, and white). Two examples obtained by 

 him found their way to the Museum of Paris, where Temminck (Hist. 

 Pig. ed. 2, i. p. 50, pi. 19) seems to have seen thetn at the begin- 

 ning of the present century, their plumage very much the worse, he 

 says, for the fumes (of sulphuric acid, as M. Alphonse Milne- 

 Edwards informs me) to which they had been exposed. In 1/90, 

 Bonnaterre, describing the species afresh, but apparently from the 

 same specimens, said of it (Encycl. Meth. p. 233), and probably 

 with truth : — ' On le trouve frequemment a I'ile de France.' In 

 or about 1816 the University of Edinburgh became possessed of 

 what has long been known as the ' Dufresne Collection,' from the 

 French naturalist of that name, who was originally (as I learn from 

 M. A. Milne-Edwards) a dealer in Natural-IIistury specimens, and 

 had also been for some time Conservator of the Cabinet of Natural 

 History belonging to the Empress Josephine, but in 1815 or the 

 following year entered the Museum of Paris as Aide-Naturaliste. 

 In which capacity it was that he parted with the collection obtained 

 by the University of Edinburgh I cannot say ; but that collection 

 contained the specimen of this Pigeon, now before you, as the label 

 affixed to it shows' ; and it remained tlie property of the University 

 until a fcvv years ago, when it was transferred to the newly established 

 Museum of Science and Art at Edinburgh. This brings me to the 

 end of my facts. 



" It is a very unpleasing task to expose the blunders of other 

 naturalists ; but I am sorry to say tliat few authors subsequent to 

 Sonnerat and Bonnaterre have referred to this species without making 

 some mistake about it. In one very conspicuous case this mistake 

 can scarcely have been otherwise than intentional. The misstate- 

 ments of Le Vaillant are notorious; but I do not know a more un- 

 blushing instance of his mendacity than his circumstantial account of 

 the Ramier herisse, as he called this species (Ois. d' Afr. vi. p. 74). It 

 naturally n)isled all succeeding authors, until his assertions respecting 

 this bird were concisely summed up by Sundevall (Krit. Framstalln. 

 p. 53) in the sentence ' quae omnia inter fabulas numeranda sunt.' 

 But Sundevall did not seem to have suspected that the species was 

 extinct ; nor perhaps had any one else, until Mr. Edward Newton, 

 during his residence in iMauritius between 1859 and 1878, became 

 convinced that such was the case. He indeed once hoped (Ibis, 1861, 

 p. 277) that he had heard of it ; but further inquiry proved the bird 

 meant by his informant to be Trocaza meijeri ; and the only trace of 



' "The inscription, as I copied it at the time, ran :— ' The Hackled Pigeon. 

 Ptilinojms nitidissimus, Scop. sp. Locality Isle of Frnnce. L'olumha Francim 

 Dufresne.' On the bottom of the -rtand wan vnitten, ' R-d Hackled Pigeon, 219, 

 CoUimba Francia Linn.' " 



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