328 MESSES. A. AND E. NEWTON ON THE OSTEOLOGY OF THE SOLITAIEE. 
if he may not be called its discoverer ; for we have no knowledge of any writer who had 
previously distinguished it from the better-known Dodo of Mauritius*, and Strickland 
was the first naturalist who placed its former existence beyond all doubt. 
The remains of this bird, the “ Solitaire ” of Rodriguez, existing in museums until 
within the last few years seem to have been as follows: — The Museum of the Jardin 
des Plantes possessed jive bones, said to have been found in a cave in Rodriguez in 1789 f ; 
these were a femur, a tarso-metatarsal, a humerus, the median portion of a sternum, and 
a portion of the cranium J. The Andersonian Museum at Glasgow contained six, being 
part of a collection made by the late Mr. Telfair, a right and left femur with the frag- 
ment of a third, a left tibia, and a right and left tarso-metatarsal §. The Zoological 
Society of London possessed the remaining portion of this collection [| ; but the specimens 
{jive in number) were for some time mislaid, and were consequently not available for 
the use of Messrs. Strickland and Melville when they published their work In 
1851 these specimens were rediscovered in the house of the. Society by Mr. Bartlett, 
and proved to be a portion of a right humerus, a right femur, a right tibia, and a right 
and left tarso-metatarsal — the last two belonging to different individuals. In the 
description of these bones, which Mr. Bartlett published soon after'**, he was induced 
into several grave, though perfectly excusable, errors, and in fact only referred one of 
the specimens (the right tarso-metatarsal) to the Solitaire, though there can now be no 
doubt that they all belong to that species. Nor was Strickland much more fortunate, 
for early in the following year (1852) he also described these same specimensff, and, 
misled as his predecessor had been by the same causes (of which, however, he assigned 
a different explanation), he equally imagined that he had before him the remains of 
more than one speciesJJ. 
Besides the sixteen bones just enumerated two others were the property of Strickland 
— one, a left tarso-metatarsus, found at the same time and place as those in the Museum 
at Paris; and another, a right tarso-metatarsus, said to have been found in 1831 by 
Colonel Dawkins, but in the same cave as the others §§. 
* Sir Thomas Herbert, who in 1628 sailed by “ Digarroys ” (i. e. Rodriguez), mentions (‘ Some Years Travels 
into divers parts of Asia and Afrique, &c.’ London : 1638, fol. p. 341) “ Dodos ” as being found in that island, 
confounding the species to which they belonged with that of Mauritius {id. op. cit. p. 347) ; but he gives no 
description of the former. f Strickland, ‘ The Dodo &e.’ p. 51. 
X These had been exhibited by Cuvieb to the French Academy of Sciences in 1830 as belonging to the true 
Dodo (Strickland, ut supra cit. p. 52). We desire to express our very sincere thanks to M. Alphonse Milne- 
Edwabds for his kindness in procuring for us models of all these specimens. 
§ Sir William Jardine was good enough some years since to give me casts of these specimens. — A. N. 
|| Proc. Zool. Soc. 1833, p. 32. ‘ The Dodo &c.’ p. 52. 
Proc. Zool. Soc. 1851, pp. 280-284, Aves, pi. xlv. Reprinted Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 2nd ser. xiv. pp. 
297-301. 
ff Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. iv. part 6 (1859), pp. 187-196, pi. 55. 
These bones are now in the British Museum. 
§§ Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 2nd ser. iv. pp. 335-337. For a cast of one of these we are indebted to the 
kindness of Mrs. H. E. Strickland. 
