The Natuealist. 



distinctly tlie knob wliicli Leguat described, wliicli lias tlie appearance 

 of diseased bone. Now every one knows that pigeons when they fight, 

 use their wings as weapons of offence, and the solitaire, who is an 

 abnormally developed pigeon, is no exception in this. And there is 

 little doubt that the solitaires, which Leguat describes as fighting with 

 the wings, used by the force of their blows to raise a little callus or 

 Ivnob of diseased bone which in time became hereditary and increased 

 to the size you see. The females had on their wings a small knob also, 

 but it never presented the spongy, diseased appearance you see here, 

 from which it is probable that Leguat was not quite correct in 

 describing the females as fighting among themselves, as he did. 



Should you desire to satisfy yourselves why the dodo and solitaire 

 come to be classed with the pigeons, I would refer you to Messrs. 

 Melville and Strickland's work, " the Dodo and its kindred," of which 

 a copy will be found in the Library of the Leeds Philosophical and 

 Literary Society ; it is rather too technical a matter to be gone into in 

 this place. 



I was fortunate enough to find a great number of bones of the 

 solitaire, including some of those few which had not been previously 

 met with. I was also obliged to record my belief in the correctness 

 of the opinion which Messrs. Newton advance in their excellent 

 memoir on the solitaire in the Philosophical Tranctions, as to the 

 cause which effected the extinction of this magnificent bird, viz : that 

 man is simply and solely to blame. In the first place he punished 

 tha solitaire pitilessly himself, as many of the old travellers tell us. 

 In, the second, man's carelessness or wantonness caused the fires 

 which on several occasions laid portions of the island waste, and 

 changed what used to be fertile and luxuriant parts of the island into 

 little better than desert. Lastly, what man had so ably commenced 

 was consummated by his camp-followers, the hogs and cats aforesaid, 

 who would prevent the race of solitaires from being carried on by a 

 continual persecution of the young, which Leguat teUs us were 

 produced singly and were helpless for months. 



A.^ l;ir as I could decide the question, the last solitaires must have 

 p( . • 1 ;i little more than a century ago. The circumstances under 

 wi;:^ i ,i.:);^t of the remains I brought home were found pointed to the 

 hLi\i> ] laving crept into the cave mouths, possibly to avoid a fire then 

 raging in the woods, and tumbled into a cleft in the rocks, from w^hiclj 

 they could not get out, owing to their unwieldliness, and so died. 



In addition to the solitaire, remains were found in the caves (1) 

 of an owl, Carine murivora, which, according to Leguat, lived on small 



