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Messrs. A. and E. Newton on the [June 11, 



III. ^' On the Osteology of the Solitaire or Didine Bird of the Island 

 of Rodriguez^ Pezophaps solitaria (Gmel.).''^ By Alfred 

 Newton, M.A., Professor of Zoology and Comparative Ana- 

 tomy in the University of Cambridge, and Edv^tard Newton, 

 M.A., Auditor- General of Mauritius. Communicated by P. L. 

 ScLATER, Esq., M.A., Ph.D. Received May 6, 1868. 



(Abstract.) 



The Solitaire of Rodriguez was first satisfactorily shown to be distinct 

 from the Dodo of Mauritius {Bidus ineptus) by Strickland in 1844, from 

 a renewed examination of the evidence respecting it, consisting of the ac- 

 count given by Leguat in 1 708, and of the remains sent to France and 

 Great Britain. Strickland, in 1848, further proved it to be generically 

 distinct from the Dodo. The remains existing in Europe in 1852 were 

 eighteen bones, of which five were at Paris, six at Glasgow, five in pos- 

 session of the Zoological Society (since transferred to the British Museum), 

 and two in that of Strickland, who, at the date last mentioned, described 

 them as belonging to tivo species, the second of which he named Pezo- 

 phaps minor, from the great difference observable in the size of the 

 specimens. In 1864 one of the authors visited Rodriguez, and there found 

 in a cave two more bones, while a third was picked up by a gentleman with 

 him. All these bones have been described, and most of them figured, in 

 the publications of the Zoological Society, and in the large work of Strick- 

 land and Dr. Melville *. 



Encouraged by his former success, that one of the authors of the present 

 paper who had before been to Rodriguez urged Mr. George Jenner, the 

 magistrate of the island, to make a more thorough search in its caves ; and in 

 1865 this gentleman sent no less than eighty -one ^^Qcimem to Mauritius. 

 These were forthwith transmitted to London, and exhibited at a meeting of 

 the Zoological Society in that year, when it appeared that the notion pre- 

 viously entertained of there having been two species of Pezophaps was 

 erroneous, and that probably the dilFerence in size of the specimens was 

 sexual. 



News of this last discovery reached England during the meeting of the 

 British ilssociation at Birmingham, and, prompted by Mr. P. L. Sclater, 

 that body made a liberal grant to aid further researches. Owing to 

 several causes, the scarcity of labourers in Rodriguez being the chief, nearly 

 a year elapsed before these could be begun. But in 1866, some 

 coolies having been expressly sent thither to dig in the caves, a very large 

 collection of the bones of this bird, amounting to nearly two thousand spe- 

 cimens, was obtained. These specimens include almost all the most im- 

 portant parts of the skeleton, and furnish the authors with the material for 

 the present paper. 



* The Dodo and its Kindred. London : 1848, 4to. 



