152 Mr. E. Newton's Notes of a Visit 



About eleven o'clock we started for another cave, about two 

 miles off. It was most intensely hot, and we soon found that 

 our guide knew but little of the way ; so I suggested a halt in 

 order that he might go on and find out where he was. In two 

 minutes we were all sound asleep, and so we remained for nearly 

 an hour, when some one heard the guide shout, and on we went 

 again, up a small rivulet with steep sides, the water in which 

 was brackish and quite undrinkable by itself, and amid a grove 

 of thick fan-palms. Here I saw the only forest trees I came 

 across; they were "bois d' olive," and perhaps sixty or seventy 

 feet high, and three or four in circumference at six feet from the 

 ground. I also saw a pair of my new Di^ymceca, with food in 

 their bills. They evidently had a nest, and I stayed back to 

 watch them, but they both managed to get rid of the food, I 

 suppose by going to their young. I was afraid of missing my 

 way, and so putting the rest of the party to inconvenience, that 

 I could not wait till the birds had found a fresh supply. 

 Arrived at the cave, it was found to be too late to enter, for 

 fear of losing the tide. All my companions turned back at once, 

 excepting one who went some hundred yards or so inside with 

 me. I picked up a shell or two of a landtortoise, and two 

 bones ; one of which on examination 1 find nearly fits the repre- 

 sentation of the left tarso-nietatarsus in Mr. Strickland's work 

 (plate 15. fig. 2), with the exception that it is as perfect as the 

 right one depicted on the same plate (fig. 3). The other bone 

 is a fragment, of which both the extremities are wanting. Both 

 are almost free from any earthy deposit upon them, and indeed 

 where I found them there appeared to be no drip at all. In 

 one of the cavities of the tarso-metatarsus there is just a 

 small quantity of white matter — lime, I suppose, in one of its 

 forms, but it comes off easily enough. They are of an ivory- 

 yellow — almost, I should say, their natural colour. 



Since my return to Mauritius, I have found that Captain 

 Barkly, when in Rodriguez, picked up a third bone, which at first 

 he thoughtwas onlya turtle's; but it turns out to be an undoubted 

 right femur of a bird, and similar to the specimen from the 

 Paris Museum figured in "The Dodo " book (plate 14. fig. 8)*. 

 * These three bones were exhibited at the meeting of the Zoological 



