THE MASCARENE ISLANDS. 127 



is evidently introduced from the supposed resemblance between the two birds 

 in this particular. One cannot fail to see that this powerful instrument had 

 a use ; and we remember the case of Carpophaga latrans, Peale ; for Mr. E. 

 L. Layard says (P. Z. S. 1875, p. 438), of the diet of these large Pigeons :—" I 

 annex the size of two seeds found in the crop of one : — axis 4'^ circumf. 3'' 6'''; 

 axis b'\ circumf. 3''. This was only the hard woody part; the pulp had been 

 digested .^ ... It feeds upon the wild nutmeg, the large drupe-like seeds of some 

 laurinaceous forest trees, and the fruits of both the Kaufia Pakus.'' 



The merit of the discovery of the proper place of Didus ineptus belongs 

 to Professor Reinhardt— a laurel of his chaplet ; and Messrs. Strickland and 

 Melville made its columbine affinities known to the general public. 



We can hardly look at the heavy bird without regarding it as the emblem 

 of stagnation, though probably it was not more foohsh than a vast many 

 others. Notwithstanding the great powers of flight belonging to some 

 Pigeons, yet a terrestrial tendency appears in others, which we may suppose 

 to have arrived at a maximum in the subject before us. In nature there is 

 " a principle of least action;" and perhaps we may regard this species as its 

 type in ornithology. 



Respecting the loss we have sustained in its disappearance, aud the 

 cause, Mr. Wallace says, in his great work on the Geographical Distribution 

 of Animals (vol. i. p. 44) :—" Swine, w^hich ran wild in Mauritius, exter- 

 minated the Dodo.'' This, however, appears to me to be a mistake. Mr. J. 

 Caldwell (P. Z. S. 1875, in ^' Notes on the Zoology of Rodriguez," p. 646), 

 speaking of the Solitaire in that island, is of opinion that pigs did not destroy 

 that bird. I cannot help thinking that we require to look for nothing beyond 

 the agency of man, as in the case of the Gare-fowl (^Alca impemiis, Linn.) and 

 probably that of the wingless birds of New^ Zealand QDinornis)^. 



^ Cf. 'Transactions of New-Zealand Institute/ 1875, vol. viii. pp. 58-83, where Mr. W. T. L. 

 Travers, F.L.S., has a most instructive paper on the extinction of the Moa, making out its ultimate 

 destruction ^^ to be a matter of comparatively recent date.-'-' 



