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VIII. On the Osteology of the Solitaire or Bidine Bird of the Island of Rodriguez , 
Pezophaps solitaria ( Gmel .). By Alfred Newton, M.A., Professor of Zoology and 
Comparative Anatomy in the University of Cambridge , and Edward Newton, M.A., 
Auditor-General of Mauritius. Communicated by P. L. Sclater, M.A., Ph.B ., F.B.S. 
Received May 6, — Read June 11, 1868. 
Evidence as to the fact of the island of Rodriguez in the Indian Ocean having been 
formerly inhabited by a Didine bird specifically distinct from the true Dodo of Mauri- 
tius ( Didus ineptus, Linn.) appears to have been first satisfactorily adduced in 1844 by 
the late Hugh Edwin Strickland*. It is true that, eighty years ago, Gmelin, in his 
edition of the ‘Systema Naturae’ of Linnaeus (tom. i. p. 728), described in scientific 
language, from the account given by LEGUATf (with which he was apparently acquainted 
only at second hand through the intervention of Buffon J), a second species of the genus 
Bidus as inhabiting that island ; but this species had been long rejected by all zoologists, 
except those whose labours had been confined to the work of compilation, until, as just 
mentioned, Strickland proved, from a renewed examination of the original and other 
accounts, that the species thus described, however it might have been misrepresented, 
had certainly once existed, and moreover that remains of it were contained in at least 
three collections — the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, the Andersonian Museum of 
Glasgow, and the collection of the Zoological Society of London. 
The opinion thus propounded was, four years later, set forth at greater length by its 
author, the subject of it being then declared not only specifically but generically distinct 
from Bidus ineptus , and called Pezophaps solitaria (Gmel.)§, and since that time no one 
has ventured to impugn its accuracy. Thus, though formally accepting Gmelin as the 
first author who applied the set rules of zoological nomenclature to this species, little 
credit is really due to him from the fact. Leguat, in 1708, was its original describer||, 
* Proc. Zool. Soc. 1844, pp. 77-79. (Reprinted in Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. siv. pp. 324-326.) 
t Voyage et Avantnres de Francois Leguat &c. Londres : 1708, 2 vols. 12mo (vol. i. pp. 98-102) ; A New 
Voyage to the East-Indies by Francis Leguat &c. London: 1708, 1 vol. 8vo (pp. 71-74). 
% Hist. Nat. des Oiseaux, vol. i. p. 485. 
§ The Dodo and its Kindred &c. By H. E. Strickland, M.A. &c., and A. G. Melville, M.D. &c. London : 
1848, 4to (pp. 46-56, and 113-119). 
|| The name “ Solitaire ,” or (in the contemporaneous English translation of his work) “ Solitary,” by which 
Leguat called the Didine bird of Rodriguez had in reality been previously bestowed by C arrIs (Voyage des Indes 
Orientales &c., par Mr. Carr£, Paris: 1699, vol. i. p. 12) on the Didine bird of Bourbon (Reunion). As the 
rule of priority is not necessarily enforced with regard to vernacular names, there seems to be no reason why 
the Rodriguez species should not retain that by which it has become generally known. We can afford to keep 
the Bourbon species waiting for a common name until some particle of its remains is discovered. 
