NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 615 
E GI core Sa OF THE MASCARENE IsLANDS. — With the Dodo 
were associated a large Parroquet, the Solitaire, the Géant (Gallinula 
gigantea woes ed the Porphyrio (Notor- 
nis?) cwrulescens Schl., which last is as large 
as a full-sized goose, blue, with the beak and 
feet red. It could not fly, but ran with great 
ness 
We figure from Schlegel’s account in the 
French Annals of Natural Science, 1866, the 
large as that of a E srt with a madik 
spot under the very sm ings. 
These singular birds Na the land 
replaced the mammals, of which these two 
groups of islands are ride and thus ex- 
plains why these most characteristic birds are 
so peculiar in their size and endian These 
birds were destroyed as early as 1700 by the 
European settlers, the cats and dogs, and the N 
maroon Negroes. The Dodo and Solitaire are he  Géant,” a 
natural size.. 
figured in Dana’s Manual of Geology. 
THE EAGLE a Fisner.— The American bald eagle (Horne leuco- 
chat) ILGA g the group of fishing-eagles, as might be inferred 
fi he genus, which is derived from hals (sea), and 
es pie e); Whence Hel-i-a-et-us (and less properly in science, the 
c form Haliæetus), a name applied to the osprey by = e Greeks. 
The G k alate tus” and the pronunciation ‘‘ Haliâetus” are erro- 
neous. 
The East Indian H. ponticerianus is known to be a fisher, and the 
South African H. vocifer is called ‘the fishing-eagle ” at the Cape of 
Good Ho 
The mode in which the bald eagle pursues and robs the fish-hawk is 
well known from the description of Alexander Wilson, which has been 
often quoted, as in the fourth volume (p. 92) of Harper’s School and 
Family Readers, by Marcius Willson, who, however, has interpolated 
the words ‘‘as he is not a fisher himself.” In my “‘ Notes on Willson’s 
