CHAPTER 11, 
The Brevipennate Bird of Rodriguez, the Sourrarre. 
(Pezophaps solitaria, nobis ;—Didus solitarius of Gmelin.) 
Evidence of Leguat ; of Herbert—Bones sent to the Paris Museum ; to the Andersonian Museum at Glasgow ; 
to the Loological Society of London—Afinities of the Solitaire. 
I now proceed to notice another bird of equally remarkable structure to the Dodo, and the 
evidence, both historical and osteological, of whose existence, though less abundant, is equally 
positive. he Island of Rodriguez, which is about fifteen miles long by six broad, and 
situated about three hundred miles to the east of Mauritius, gave birth to an apterous bird 
called the Solitaire,! which seems to have been an homologous representative of the Dodo in 
the last-mentioned island.? Rodriguez appears to have remained in a desert and uninhabited 
condition until 1691, when a party of French Protestant refugees settled upon the island, 
and remained there for two years. Their commander, Francois Leguat, a man of intelligence 
and education, has left a highly interesting account of their adventures, and of the various 
productions of the island. The chief portion of his work which concerns us at present 
I will extract in the French original, accompanied by an old translation. 
' The name Solitaire had originally been given to an allied, though doubtless distinct, bird in Bourbon, of 
which we shall speak presently. Leguat (who never visited Bourbon) probably supposed the Rodriguez bird to be 
the same species, and therefore gave it the name which other voyagers had imposed on the Bourbon bird. But as 
Leguat’s bird is the type of the “ Didus solitarius” of systematists, I prefer retaining for it par excellence the 
name of Solitaire. 
* Representation in Zoology is of two kinds, analogous and homologous. Analogous representation is where a 
group or species in oxe part of the organic creation performs a similar office, and is, guoad hoc, similarly organized, 
to a group or species in another part: e.g., the Cefacea among Mammals represent by analogy the Fish among 
Vertebrata. This kind of representation exists irrespectively of time and space. Homologous representation is 
where two groups or species in the same part of the organic creation perform a similar office in different geogra- 
phical regions, or at different times. Thus the Elephants of India and of Africa represent each other dy homology in 
space, as the Mammoth and modern Elephants do in time. See Philosophical Magazine, Ser. 3. vol. xxviii. p. 354. 
